Now the Work Begins: Lessons in a New Kind of Democracy with Audrey Tang

We were delighted to host Audrey Tang, chief architect of Taiwan’s internationally acclaimed digital democracy. During this conversation, we explored:

How Taiwan harnessed digital tools to create inclusive growth and social unity
What the UK could learn from Taiwan about being a thriving democracy in the digital age.
The intersection of technology and democracy, and how they can build upon each other.
How we could encourage technologists, policymakers, business leaders, and citizens to come together to use technology to build a more collaborative, diverse, and productive democracy.

About Audrey:

Audrey Tang is Taiwan’s first Digital Minister (2016-2024) and the world’s first non-binary cabinet minister.

She has been a key contributor to g0v (“Gov Zero”) a decentralised civic tech movement that promotes transparency in government, information sharing, and helped develop vTaiwan, a participatory democracy platform. Tang played a key role in the success of the 2014 Student Sunflower Movement, which ultimately resulted in her being invited to join the government as a Minister without a portfolio in 2016 before the creation of The Ministry for Digital Affairs (moda) in 2022. During her time in government, Tang played a pivotal role in Taiwan’s world-leading Covid-19 response.

In Tang’s new book, Plurality, co-authored with E. Glen Weyl and a community of contributors, a new vision is laid out for how technologists, policymakers, business leaders, and activists might come together to use technology to build a more collaborative, diverse, and productive democratic world.

About the Collaborative Democracy Network:

The Collaborative Democracy Network is a new event series created by Demos. It is for politicians, policymakers and civil society to come together to discuss innovations that put people at the heart of policy making.

If we’re going to build a more collaborative democracy that supports politicians to work with the public on the difficult choices that lie ahead, we’re going to have to do policy making differently. This means bold thinking about what’s possible, looking honestly at what the challenges will be, and drawing inspiration from democratic innovation from across the world.

Demos will be hosting a series of regular events bringing together leading voices in participatory ways of working with politicians, policy-makers and civil society from across the UK. Together we will explore how collaborative democracy can become a reality, creating better policy making processes, strengthening citizenry, and renewing trust in our democracy.

About CASM:

With emerging technologies transforming our world at an ever faster pace, CASM, Demos’s technology policy hub, works to build bridges between politicians, technical experts, and citizens to explore solutions, build trust, and create policy to ensure our technologies benefit the public.