Former U.S. Tech Officer, Taiwanese Minister Talk Technology And Democracy at IOP

Experts on the intersection of public policy and data discussed how technology could be used to strengthen democratic governance at a Harvard Institute of Politics event Thursday evening.

The event — moderated by University Professor Danielle S. Allen and Harvard Kennedy School Carr Center for Human Rights Faculty Director Mathias Risse — featured former U.S. Chief Technology Officer Megan J. Smith and former Taiwaneese Minister of Digital Affairs Audrey Tang.

The talk also included brief remarks from newly-appointed HKS dean Jeremy M. Weinstein, who has been vocal about his desire for the Kennedy School to increase programming at the intersection of technology and public policy.

During his opening address, Weinstein said that while his role at Stanford University was to teach budding engineers to critically consider the consequences of the technologies they create, his job at the Kennedy School focuses more on educating future public leaders about how emerging technologies should shape public policy.

“At the Harvard Kennedy School, I’m just as energized by the challenges posed by new technologies,” Weinstein said.

“Here, it’s important that we work with aspiring public leaders to think ambitiously and critically about how the advance of new technologies might shape our approach to solving public problems,” he added.

During the event, Tang and Smith said that technology could help strengthen democratic systems by encouraging citizens to more actively participate in legislative processes and democracy more broadly.

“There really are thousands of Americans who came from the tech sector into our government to serve, serve the country,” Smith said. “And all of you should come — the government’s only whoever shows up.”

Smith said that her work using a “different way of doing things" can be rare and thus needs “air cover” in the form of support from leading political and societal figures — which she said she received from former President Barack Obama.

Tang said trust in government among Taiwanese citizens has risen dramatically in the past decade in part because of close government collaboration with the Taiwanese people through technology.

“The reason why we rebuilt that trust is not that we work for the people, but rather we work with the people,” Tang said. “We have found a set of mechanisms, algorithms and so on, that can surface the differences and then also find a common ground from those differences.”

Smith added that collaboration across different disciplines ranging from art to technology to public policy — something she called “cross-pollinating” — would be critical to solving complex public policy and democracy-related problems in the digital age.

Throughout the talk, Tang struck a tone of optimism for how governments could help make technology more human-centered. She opened the speech with a recitation of a poem she wrote when she started as minister of digital affairs to describe how she envisioned her role.

"When we see the Internet of Things, let’s make it an Internet of Beings. When we see virtual reality, let’s make it a shared reality. When we see machine learning, let’s make it collective learning. When we see user experience, let’s make it about human experience,” she said.

—Staff writer William C. Mao can be reached at william.mao@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @williamcmao.

—Staff writer Dhruv T. Patel can be reached at dhruv.patel@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @dhruvtkpatel.