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Schedule

Thursday, March 25, 2021
7 p.m. Moderated Discussion
7:40 p.m. Audience Q&A — Questions welcome via YouTube Live or Facebook Live

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As countries around the world struggle to handle the coronavirus pandemic, Taiwan stands out as a relative success story with low numbers of locally transmitted cases and only seven deaths in the entire country. One year into the outbreak, Taiwan has fewer than 900 officially confirmed cases, of which a vast majority were imported rather than domestic. A key figure in Taiwan's response, digital minister Audrey Tang attributes the country's success in combating the pandemic to creative use of technology, social innovation, and cooperation throughout the society.

There are many lessons other countries can learn from Taiwan, beyond how to better prepare for the next pandemic or another global crisis. Taiwan's experience with social innovation can serve as an example in new possibilities in deploying "civic tech" to challenge disinformation, encourage trust in the government, and better organize public behavior.

Join Asia Society for a conversation with Audrey Tang, Taiwan's Digital Minister, on the need for digital democracy and open government — and how those very concepts serve the social innovation that helped Taiwan combat the coronavirus.

About the Speaker

Audrey Tang is Taiwan’s digital minister in charge of Social Innovation. Audrey is known for revitalizing the computer languages Perl and Haskell, as well as building the online spreadsheet system EtherCalc in collaboration with Dan Bricklin. In the public sector, Audrey served on Taiwan national development council’s open data committee and the 12-year basic education curriculum committee; and led the country’s first e-Rulemaking project. In the private sector, Audrey worked as a consultant with Apple on computational linguistics, with Oxford University Press on crowd lexicography, and with Socialtext on social interaction design. In the social sector, Audrey actively contributes to g0v (“gov zero”), a vibrant community focusing on creating tools for the civil society, with the call to “fork the government.”

About the Moderator

Martyn E. Goossen is Vice Chairman of the J.P. Morgan Private Bank. Marty has over 40 years of experience in financial services, nearly all of which has been in the wealth management field. The majority of his career was spent working in Asia. Marty and his wife, Kathy, moved to Hong Kong with Citibank in 1978 and transferred to Tokyo in 1984. Marty joined JPMorgan Chase in Tokyo in 1988 and remained in Asia until 2006, when he moved to Houston to take the position as head of the Houston Private Bank and President of the Houston Region. In 2017, Marty was appointed to Vice Chairman of the J.P. Morgan Private Bank focusing on the south region of the United States. Marty has undertaken a number of civic responsibilities in Houston. He serves on the boards of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Asia Society Texas Center, Central Houston Inc., and The Houston Zoo. He is also a member of the Council of Overseers at Rice University’s Jones School of Business and is a Director of the Singapore American School Foundation. Marty received his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School in 1977 and a B.S. in Economics from Union College in Schenectady, New York.

Asia Society hosts today's leading voices, providing commentary on events in news, society, and culture. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect Asia Society views.

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