g0v Civic Tech Community
Mariana Amatullo, Bryan Boyer, Jennifer May, Andrew Shea · 2021
As of summer 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic had affected nearly every country on earth, causing more than 900,000 deaths and a global economic recession. In most parts of the world, the pandemic exposed over-burdened public healthcare systems, fragile supply chains, and slow-to-react governments. Due to its proximity to China, the original epicenter of the virus outbreak, it was anticipated that Taiwan would be impacted sooner and harder than the rest of the world. Even as much of the global economy grappled with lockdowns, schools and businesses in Taiwan could remain open due to low infection rates and transparent access to critical information. Their effort on the project demonstrates the potential for digital democracy, deployed with a bottom-up, iterative, multifocal approach as a complement, or even alternative, to traditional top-down administrative approaches.