11/9/2021 | Digital Tech and the Pandemic: Learning from Taiwan’s Crisis Management and Beyond

As an unprepared world reeled under the onslaught of the pandemic, Taiwan stood out for its early success in managing the spread of the virus. Taiwan continues to outperform other states in handling Covid-19, and a big reason is the way in which digital technology is being skillfully deployed for public health purposes within a demanding, vibrant democracy.

Come and hear Taiwan’s trailblazing Digital Minister Audrey Tang give an insider account of how Taiwan “hacked” the pandemic, got and stayed ahead of the crisis, and in the process further invigorated Taiwan’s democracy. Following her keynote address will be two experts who will speak more broadly on the promise and the perils of the digital space for global public health and what we can learn from Taiwan’s experience.

Speakers

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.”

Chelsea C. Chou is an Associate Professor in the Graduate Institute of National Development at National Taiwan University. Her research is motivated by an interest in the political economy of policy reform, with a focus on health and social policy in China. Chou received her Ph.D. in the Department of Government at Cornell University. She has published at Journal of Chinese Political Science, Social Policy & Administration, ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information, Mainland China Studies, and other places. Her broader research fields include Comparative Politics, Authoritarianism, Social Policies, and Chinese Politics. 

Lorien Abroms is a Professor of Health Communication & Marketing at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at the George Washington University and serves as the Public Health Governance Cluster Lead at GW’s Institute for Data Democracy and Politics. Dr. Abroms expertise is on the application of digital communication technologies for health promotion. She has developed and evaluated leading mobile health programs for smoking cessation and other types of behavior change. Text2Quit has been offered nationally through quitlines since 2012, with other programs developed by Dr. Abroms offered through the National Cancer Institute’s Smokefree.gov. Dr. Abroms is widely published in leading academic journals including the American Journal of Public Health and the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. She is an advisor to the WHO’s Be Healthy Be Mobile initiative.

Moderator

Deepa M. Ollapally is Research Professor of International Affairs and the Associate Director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University. She directs the Rising Powers Initiative which tracks foreign policy debates in major powers of Asia and Eurasia.

She is a specialist on Indian foreign policy, India-China relations, Indo-Pacific regional and maritime security, and comparative foreign policy outlooks of rising powers and the rise of nationalism in foreign policy. Ollapally is the author of five books including Worldviews of Aspiring Powers (Oxford, 2012). Her current research focuses on maritime and regional security in the Indo-Pacific. She is currently writing a book on Big Power Competition for Influence in the Indo-Pacific. She has won grants from Carnegie Corporation, MacArthur Foundation, Smith Richardson Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and Asia Foundation for work related to India and Asia.

Ollapally has held senior positions in the policy world including US Institute of Peace; and National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, India. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University.