Written by Yu-Ching Kuo and Chun-Yi Lee.
Jessica Davies is the guest editor of the Taiwan Insight: International Journal of Taiwan Studies Special Issue for March 2024
Image credit: open gov data (scrabble) by justgrimes/ Flickr, license: CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED.
With limited access to the physical public sphere, the COVID-19 pandemic has made digital democracy more vital than ever. This is the reason why we focus our discussion on digital democracy in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, we look at potential challenges and opportunities that might come with its adaptation in Taiwan in the post-pandemic era. We discuss to what extent the Taiwanese practised digital democracy during the pandemic has gone beyond the current landscape of conceptualisation. Our main question is, to what extent, digital protection does not intrude on citizens’ privacy during the pandemic? Especially in our case of discussion, Taiwan, a democracy which upholds citizens’ human rights?
The Taiwanese government, like many others throughout the world, has been keeping pace with the times and global trends, such as promoting the digitalisation of government services officially since 1998. A handful of social innovation projects were initiated to implement electric government (E-Government) (from 1998 to 2016) and transform from E-Government to “Digital Government” since 2016. The development of digital democracy cannot be decoupled from the Open Government Initiative (OPI) and Open-Source Initiative (OSI). The OPI lays its emphasis on the use and reuse of open government data to “achieve better democracy, economic growth, and good governance”, and to widen citizen participation and collaboration and create value for the broader economy. The OSI focuses on liberating software users so that they may run, enhance, and modify source code in an attempt to pursue the common good, e.g. societal benefit and social justice. OPI and OSI, with their respective agendas, both encourage the openness of data public/private sector partnerships and, most significantly, involve the participation of civic hackers and civil society organisations (CSOs).
The role that civic hackers and CSOs play in co-producing and co-designing the concept and practice of digital democracy in Taiwan is indeed significant. And yet under-researched. CSOs have also been bridging communication between the government and the public, at least since the early stage of opening government data (OGD) initiatives under the Ma administration around 2012. Their efforts have helped, particularly in terms of accelerating the data access process, data openness, and interoperability between data formats, and setting up the foundation for collaboration between the public and citizens. To help with combating the COVID-19 pandemic, a handful of civic hackers and CSOs either work individually or collaboratively to use data released by the central government or open data on the internet to, for instance, produce live maps for citizens to purchase face masks from pharmacies that have them in stock.
To unlock economic and societal value from the digitalisation of government data, policy directions towards the Taiwanese government since 2012 have laid strong emphasis on, firstly, re-usability and machine readability of the open data and, secondly, maximising the data value by working collaboratively with citizens and the private sector. However, the highlight of the policy goals and objectives over the last decade has gradually shifted from the people’s right to “view” the information released by the public sector to satisfy the people’s right to further access and use of data released by respective government agencies.
The Taiwan Center for Disease Control (Taiwan CDC) and the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) can require network providers to provide information regarding confirmed cases’ footprints. These surveillance facilities, monitoring systems and Taiwan CDC’s epidemiology-driven approaches to surveillance were adopted for epidemic prevention only. Yet, concerns were raised as deploying these systems could potentially risk violations of the right to privacy. The Taiwan Association for Human Rights (TAHR) argues that the legal basis for the government to request network providers to assist in the implementation of these facilities and systems is Article 20 of the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA). This Article states that the provider can use personal information under the conditions of “furthering public interests” and “preventing (ing) material harm to the rights and interests of others”. TAHR pointed out that according to the interpretation of legal texts, the purpose of pandemic preparedness and disease surveillance is indeed for the public interest. However, the PDPA only provides general provisions and does not set out protective measures for the collection of personal information.
Moreover, how these network providers deal with these data during and after the COVID-19 Pandemic remains unquestioned. What is controversial is that there is a gap in regulations as the PDPA did not have a single supervisory authority. Its implementation was governed respectively by the competent central authority for each industry concerned or local governments with the National Development Commission serving as the authority of its regulatory interpretation. The Taiwan Constitutional Court claimed in August 2022 that the PDPA was in danger of being unconstitutional, as it lacked an independent supervisory mechanism for personal data protection and did not adequately protect the right to privacy of personal information. The court ruled that within three years from the date of the judgment, a relevant legal system is needed to establish a supervisory mechanism to fully protect the people’s right to personal information and privacy in Article 22 of the Constitution. The governing regime of PDPA used to be distributed governance. The Personal Data Protection Commission was launched as a dedicated supervisory committee to transform its distributed governance. This ruling is vital as it demonstrates the government’s effort and further enhancement for scrutinising personal data protection, particularly when it comes to fostering the data-driven economy.
Governments around the world have also begun to promote a data-driven economy. In the post-pandemic era, big data analysis with open government data has pushed to work collaboratively with the private sector toward better pandemic preparedness and economic resilience while fostering both economic and social values of the data-driven economy. Furthermore, data sovereignty is a vital element of digital democracy. At the individual level, data sovereignty refers to an individual’s right to control and maintain their own data however they see fit, ranging from collecting, storing, and interpreting their data. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the demand for ownership of personal data is increasing, while concerns about personal privacy and security have been arising. Under these conditions, the Taiwanese version of MyData Platform officially launched in April 2021, with a slogan-my data, I decide (我的資料，我作主). Through this platform, with the exclusion of data concerning state secrecy and national security, citizens can download and use their personalised data, such as personal household registration, labour insurance, property, personal income, driving registration and other information after passing identity verification and filling in Informed Consent Form online. This platform functions as an intermediary platform for data download and exchange, with the relevant government agencies performing as the data providers and the service providers. What needs to be noted here is that in the Operation Directions Governing the Interconnection of MyData, some specific organisations, for example, subordinate authorities (agencies), local governments, universities, state-owned enterprises, financial institutions (e.g. commercial banks), obtained approval from their respective competent authorities, can act as “service provider” that has “immediate and single-time access to personalised data, and that, upon the data subject’s identity verification and consent processed either on the platform or via a recognised third-party identity verification agency”. Furthermore, “Other non-government authorities (agencies) with plans in compliance with the Cyber Security Management Act and Personal Information Protection Act in place for the protection of cyber security and personal data”.
Concerns about privacy and the appropriate storage and use of personal data have arisen in countries throughout the world. However, these concerns have gained relatively less attention in Taiwan. Yang and Tsai surveyed the COVID-19 pandemic, suggesting that 68.2 per cent of respondents value public safety more than individual privacy or freedom. They noted that those who “support democratic values and pursue collective security tend to avoid violating privacy by opposing the release of personal information”. Yang and Tsai concluded that “democratic values do not necessarily hinder collective safety, and the pursuit of collective safety need not necessarily sacrifice personal privacy”.
As we move into the post-pandemic period, some questions demand further discussion, for example, whether the Taiwanese need to sacrifice one for the good of the other? To what extent would the Taiwanese value public safety more than individual privacy? In the digital age, people are metaphorically regarded as the citizens of a ‘datafied’ society. As far as digital democracy has developed in contemporary Taiwan, citizens remain unable to fully exercise their rights, particularly with respect to controlling and maintaining their own data. Government agencies, in the name of furthering public interest, have unintentionally violated the PDPA, making us wonder to what extent citizens can claim ownership of their data. The landmark ruling by Taiwan’s Constitutional Court in 2022 reaffirms that there is a lack of clear provisions in the relevant laws regarding how personal information and data can be stored, processed, and externally transmitted while highlighting that the technology innovation and adaptation have outpaced legislation. More questions than answers are raised as digital democracy, in both theory and practice, has emerged as a contested concept in Taiwan.
Dr Yu-Ching Kuo currently works in the private sector and is an independent researcher. She was a postdoctoral policy researcher at the Science and Technology Policy Research and Information Center, National Applied Research Laboratories in Taiwan. Her recent research interests focus on social accountability of science, technology and innovation policies and S&T talent attraction and retention policy regimes. She recent Her recent publications include Taiwan as Governance Model for COVID-19 Pandemic Control (2023) (co-authored with Dr Chun-Yi Lee) and Beyond Benchmarking: Why Countries Should Ignore International Rankings (2022) (co-authored with Dr Robyn Klingler-Vidra).
Chun-yi Lee is an Associate Professor at the University of Nottingham School of Politics and International Relations. She is the Director of the Taiwan Research Hub at the University of Nottingham and the Editor-in-Chief of Taiwan Insight.
This article was published as part of a special issue on ‘International Journal of Taiwan Studies‘.
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