What is vTaiwan?

A forum started in late 2014 by g0v, Taiwan's community of civic hackers, where citizens, experts and government discuss together how laws and regulations should be written. This article also covers Join, the government-run site for proposals and public comment.

When a new internet service appears, it often clashes with old laws. And there are people whose interests collide — think ride-hailing apps versus taxis. At moments like that, could laws be made not just by officials and industry, but with citizens joining the discussion online? vTaiwan is where Taiwan tried this.

In short

vTaiwan is a Taiwanese process in which citizens, industry, experts and government agencies discuss, online and face to face, how to rewrite laws — for example, around new internet services [1][2]. The goal is what a 2018 paper on vTaiwan calls "rough consensus": an outcome that not everyone is fully satisfied with, but that everyone can accept [2].

Join is an official site that the government built, inspired by vTaiwan. Anyone can submit policy proposals and comments on it [1].

For example

Legalizing Uber (2015–2016). From mid-2014, the ride-hailing service UberX was operating in Taipei without a license [2]. At the request of the Ministry of Transportation and other agencies, vTaiwan took this up as its 12th issue [2].

To gather opinions, it used Polis, a tool that lays out opinions like a map (July 15 to August 15, 2015) [2]. At first four groups appeared — taxi drivers, UberX drivers, UberX passengers and non-users — but they soon merged into two groups (45% and 55%) [2].

One of the statements supported by both groups was: "The government should leverage this opportunity to challenge the taxi industry to improve their management & quality control system, so that drivers & riders would enjoy the same quality service as UberX's." 95% of all participants agreed [2].

Next came a face-to-face meeting with the taxi drivers' union, ride-hailing companies, Uber and three relevant ministries, streamed live (watched by 1,875 people) [2]. On May 23, 2016, the government promised to adopt all of the consensus points that Polis had revealed [2]. The amended rules took effect on October 25, 2016 [2]. For example, taxis no longer had to be painted yellow, and app-based dispatch had to show the vehicle, the driver, a fare estimate and ratings [2].

Other issues. The book Plurality lists issues vTaiwan handled: besides "the regulation of ride sharing", there were "responses to non-consensual intimate images, regulatory experimentation with financial technology and regulation of AI" [1].

Join and high-school start times. According to the book, Join, unlike vTaiwan, also handles "controversial non-technological issues such as high school's start time" [1]. And government officials "must respond if a proposal receives sufficient support" [1].

How it works

How it began

According to a 2018 paper on vTaiwan, it began in December 2014 [2]. Jaclyn Tsai, then a government minister, attended a hackathon run by g0v and asked its contributors to build a platform that would let all of Taiwanese society engage in "rational discussion" of public matters [2]. The "v" in vTaiwan "stands for 'vision', 'voice', 'vote' and 'virtual'" [2].

The Japanese book Broad Listening describes the question Tsai brought [3]: how could Taiwanese startups avoid having to put their headquarters in the Cayman Islands? After discussion, the conclusion was that this question itself should be opened up to citizens for discussion [3].

Four stages

According to the paper, the vTaiwan process has four stages [2].

Proposal — Issues are raised at small weekly hackathons, and the responsible agency decides whether to take them on. An issue without an agency and a facilitator does not move forward.
Opinion — Opinions are gathered on online forums, Polis and other tools. Polis shows people with similar views grouped together. Each round lasts at least a month.
Reflection — A face-to-face meeting of scholars, civil servants, industry and participants is streamed live. The facilitator relays online voices into the room.
Legislation — The consensus is turned into guidelines, policy, or a bill sent to the Legislative Yuan (Taiwan's parliament).

The paper names three mechanisms that support this: "interpretation" (turning jargon into plain language), "facilitation" (guiding people from conflict toward consensus) and "documentation" (making the process and data public) [2].

Results in numbers

The figures differ between sources. The 2018 paper says "26 national issues have been discussed through the vTaiwan open consultation process, and more than 80% have led to decisive government action" [2]. The book Plurality says vTaiwan "had about 200,000 users or about 1% of Taiwan's population at its peak and held detailed deliberations on 28 issues, 80% of which led to legislative action" [1]. Note that the counting methods and dates differ.

How Join differs

According to the book, the Public Digital Innovation Space (PDIS), set up in 2016 by Audrey Tang, supported both vTaiwan and Join [1]. Join has a lighter-weight interface and focuses on gathering input and proposals from a broad public [1]. The book says it has been used by roughly half the population over its lifetime, with an average of 11,000 unique daily visitors [1].

2023 onward

According to the book, vTaiwan, whose participation had fallen after COVID-19, tried to revive itself in 2023 [1]. It collaborated with OpenAI's "Democratic Inputs to AI" project, held discussions on AI ethics in partnership with Chatham House, the British research institute, and began using large language models (LLMs) for summarization [1].

What is debated

Problems the book itself names. The book acknowledges that COVID-19 interrupted face-to-face meetings and reduced participation, that the volunteer workload was heavy, that the government had no obligation to respond, and that its focus was somewhat narrow [1].
Limits named by the paper. Although citizens can in principle submit issues, very few proposals actually come from citizens [2]. Because it runs on government funding, it is hard to keep the choice of issues independent [2]. Not everything leads to a change in the law: a draft bill on selling liquor online was rejected by the Legislative Yuan [2].
Participants are not a cross-section of society. In a 2016 interview, Tang acknowledged that neither vTaiwan's nor Join's participants represent society as a whole [4]. She also said that because vTaiwan's outreach to stakeholders spreads out from people named by the agencies, it only reaches friends of friends of the agencies [4].
A report calling it "a huge flop". In The Daily Beast, Nick Aspinwall reports the view of Jason Hsu, a co-founder and former legislator, that vTaiwan has not been used for any major decision since 2018 [5]. Reasons given include: the government has no obligation to adopt its recommendations, so legislators don't take it seriously; the creation of Join made vTaiwan redundant; and in the Uber case, drivers unfamiliar with digital tools felt left behind [5]. Tiago Peixoto of the World Bank points out that technology has made it easy for governments to ask citizens for their views, but not to respond to them [5].
Criticism of the idea that technology can fix everything. In a book review, Ralf Grötker writes that the path from Polis discussions to government action was not a straight one [6]. Grötker's argument is that nothing happens unless the government and institutions are genuinely willing to take the results on board, and that democracy is ultimately about how power is distributed [6].
Voices from people involved. Speaking to Japanese researchers, Yu-Tsang Lin, formerly of PDIS, said in essence that policies were adopted thanks to strong backing from the minister of the time, but that the process now has less power to move politics and has become a "testing ground" [7]. Cui Jia-wei of vTaiwan says it should explore forms of citizen participation that do not depend on government [7].
A view that it should not be seen as a failure. The Japanese book Broad Listening notes that, as of October 2025, vTaiwan is a volunteer project receiving no direct support from the government [3]. It argues, however, that its approach — combining Polis with online and face-to-face discussion — was carried on in efforts such as the "Alignment Assembly", a citizens' meeting on AI, so its slowdown should not be seen as failure [3].

Where it fits in Plurality

vTaiwan is introduced in chapter 2-2 of the book, "The Life of a Digital Democracy", in the section "vTaiwan and Join", as a leading example of Taiwan's digital democracy [1]. Chapter 5-4, "Augmented Deliberation", draws on the vTaiwan case and treats Polis as a prime example of a system that finds opinions supported across divides [8].

Related articles: - g0v — the civic hacker community that created vTaiwan - Polis — the opinion-mapping tool used in vTaiwan - Bridging — the idea of finding support that crosses divides - Taiwan's digital democracy — the bigger picture - Alignment Assemblies and Talk to the City — what came after

Sources

Plurality, 2-2 "The Life of a Digital Democracy", section "vTaiwan and Join" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/2-2/eng/ ［CC0］
Hsiao, Lin, Tang and others, "vTaiwan: An Empirical Study of Open Consultation Process in Taiwan" (2018) — https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/xyhft ［CC BY 4.0］
Broad Listening, 11-1 "Taiwan" (in Japanese) — https://github.com/digitaldemocracy2030/broad-listening-book/blob/f69c60c838a91b91668abf109d7093b240610139/en/11_01_taiwan.md ［CC BY-NC 4.0］
Audrey Tang, "vTaiwan 及 Join 平台之分析訪談" (2016-07-02, in Chinese) — https://sayit.archive.tw/2016-07-02-vtaiwan%E5%8F%8Ajoin%E5%B9%B3%E5%8F%B0%E4%B9%8B%E5%88%86%E6%9E%90%E8%A8%AA%E8%AB%87-%E5%94%90%E9%B3%B3 ［CC0］
Nick Aspinwall, "Taiwan Tried to Digitize Democracy With vTaiwan. It Was a Huge Flop" (The Daily Beast, 2023-11-01) — https://www.thedailybeast.com/taiwan-tried-to-digitize-democracy-with-vtaiwan-it-was-a-huge-flop/
Ralf Grötker, "Why Technology Can't 'Fix' Democracy" (Netopia, 2026-08-16) — https://www.netopia.eu/why-technology-cant-fix-democracy/
Digital Democracy Research Unit, "Ideals and challenges of Taiwan's digital democracy seen through field interviews, and guidance for Japan's 'Digital Democracy 2030'" (2025-02-19, in Japanese) — https://note.com/digitaldemocracy/n/naaa818d919c7
Plurality, 5-4 "Augmented Deliberation" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/5-4/eng/ ［CC0］

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