Holopolis is a series of virtual reality (VR) experiments by the Taiwanese government. The goal is to bring citizens and government together to discuss issues raised by the local people via online petitions. Holopolis uses VR technology to create immersive surroundings which help people who participate online to have a better understanding of the local issues. Audrey Tang, Digital Minister of Taiwan, tells about Holopolis.
What is the goal of the democracy innovation initiative?
Holopolis aims to enhance the quality of interaction in open collaboration meetings between the Taiwanese people and the government. Shared virtual reality allows participants to contribute to the conversation in various ways and discover a shared rough consensus regarding local policy issues.
The aim of the experiment is to get people into the habit of listening to each other. Once people reflect on each other’s positions, they generally discover that they have something in common and are able to form a rough consensus on public issues.
What is the relevant background information to understand the context of the project?
Taiwan is using an open source survey tool called Pol.is in crowdsourced policy making processes. In Pol.is the user can either agree or disagree with statements written by fellow citizens, one at a time. The tool assumes local knowledge and is also very textual which gives advance to people who are verbally talented.
Holopolis a series of design experiments trying to solve the constraints of Pol.is and to alternate user interaction modes. People can for example speak to an avatar instead of typing answers. One strain of Holopolis is to create an immersive virtual environment that embodies the problem at hand. For example, a crowdsourced conversation regarding the construction of a new local airport could take place in a virtual reality placed in the surrounding of the planned building.
For domestic issues in Taiwan, people can gather at least 5 000 online signatures to require ministry officials to respond. If it is a local issue involving multiple ministries, we would likely hold an open collaboration meeting regarding the issue. Open collaboration meetings raised using e-petition tool have direct connection to agenda setting power, so the issues are brought to government agenda. Informed by Holopolis, the participants can have a virtual face-to-face meeting and become immersed in the hyperlocal discussion. We have for example used immersive video to deliver a point of view of divers. Each of the petitioner can also offer own videos. I also tour the local areas so the ministry officials can participate in the meetings through immersive technology and see what it is like to the locals.
Holopolis and Pol.is only augment face to face town hall meetings, but do not replace them.
How was the process conducted?
We started using Pol.is in 2015 to reach a rough consensus regarding Uber drivers’ permissions. After I became digital minister, Holopolis was started. The idea came from my colleague Shu Yang Lin. Officially the project started in 2017 with dedicated design workshops, meetings and virtual workspaces.
First open collaboration meeting that used Holopolis elements was in 2017. Motorcycle drivers wanted to relax a rule regarding a direct left turn. Many participants had never driven motorcycles so motorcyclists wore helmet cameras while making several different turns. These videos helped to understand the issue.
Many other meetings followed where immersive elements were used. The first virtual presence of ministries using Holopolis elements in regional tours was in October 2017.
How many people participated?
So far there has been 47 open collaboration meetings. The number of people who have received the recording or transcript afterwards is around 200 000.
We do not yet have numbers on how many people have attended the live streams of the meetings, because we haven’t done surveys after Holopolis was introduced. In one popular e-petition case, 2 000 people who participated in Pol.is, expressed enough opinions to be clustered, but we don’t know how many of them have viewed 360 videos.
Were there many stages in the process?
Holopolis is an ongoing project of several experiments related to improving the interaction between the citizens and the authorities in policy making process. Bits and pieces of the experiments have been implemented little by little.
What type of technology was used? Who developed the technology? (E.g. in-house, licensed software, customized open source software, or something else?)
Holopolis runs on High Fidelity VR which is open source platform available anywhere for anyone. Anyone can set up their own Holopolis conversations with help of our technical team.
How does the project contribute to affect democracy?
Using technology such as Pol.is and Holopolis, we are able to show that most people agree with most of their neighbors on most things. This rough consensus can be implemented into laws and policies by policy makers.
Also, this enables a more iterative policy making. People don’t have to wait to vote someone else into office when they can raise 5 000 signatures and form a cohesion to bind the policy makers.
What are the most important lessons learned so far?
Bring technology into the spaces where citizens live, rather than expect citizens to enter the space of technology. The government must first trust the people with agenda-setting power; then the people can make democracy work.
What challenges did you face during the process? What solutions do you propose for addressing these challenges?
Biggest challenge is delivering evidence of the impact of VR technology. We don’t know yet how much difference it makes. This could be solved by academic research focusing on addressing design questions rather than policy. Many academic institutions have expressed willingness to collaborate.
We have encountered several technology issues, mostly regarding audiovisual requirements that are far higher in 3D than 2D. All AV issues have now been allocated to a specific professional team.
What are the next steps in the project? (Perhaps plans for another project, if so, how and when, and how it will be different or similar to the previous project?)
We are working towards getting the word out of Holopolis to more designers worldwide. We wish to spread the word that this is an e-lab where people can try out ideas.
VR can be used to deliver experiences that are not only positive, and we want to evoke the artistic community to develop this idea further. I have spoken about tele-presence at the Venice Biennale this year.
We also wish to collaborate with academia to better understand the effects of Holopolis.
Have you published any research about the project? Are there additional materials online that we could link to? (E.g. research papers, policy briefs, reports, newspaper stories, project pages, etc.)