The TFD hosted a seminar for Mr. Klaikong Vaidhyakarn, the TFD’s Democracy and Human Rights Service Fellow, from 3:00 pm to 4:30 pm on October 16, 2018 at the foundation. Mr. Klaikong Vaidhyakarn delivered a presentation entitled ‘Civic Tech and Digital Civic Participation: Taiwan’s Experiences and How to Replicate to Thailand.’ Dr. Yeh-Chung Lu, Vice President of the TFD, was invited to moderate the seminar while Mr. Pomin Wu, g0v.tw, was invited as the discussant.

Mr. Klaikong Vaidhyakarn shared his observations on Taiwan’s civic technologycommunity and the organized Hackathon activities to expand the interested population for the use of Opensource and Open data technology. Civic technology in Taiwan plays some role in political movement and its campaign through online platform. Opensource and Open data activities have started to emerge in Thailand as well. However, with the impeded political situation in Thailand the technological concepts to create ‘public good’ is still new in Thailand, leading to limited use of Opensource and Open data in social movements and is only connected to the civil society in certain directly related issues such as environmental or urban development. Participants gave their feedbacks to Mr. Klaikong Vaidhyakarn‘s presentation on how the success factors of civic technology community in Taiwan to guide the development of a serious civic technology community creation in Thailand as well as to build a long-term cooperation between Thai and Taiwan’s civic technology communities.

Caption: Mr. Klaikong Vaidhyakarn, Democracy and Human Rights Service Fellow of TFD, presented his research, along with the participants’ discussion and a group photo