The Ministry of Digital Affairs yesterday said that trips abroad by its officials over the past year were necessary to promote Taiwan’s participation in international forums, after the Chinese-language United Daily News accused the ministry of excessive travel.
Citing lawmakers in the ruling and opposition parties, the newspaper said that the one-year-old ministry had failed to make gains in fighting Web-based scams or requiring social media platforms to pay for news articles while spending more than NT$14 million (US$440,321) on travel.
The ministry spent 609 days attending events held outside of the nation since its plaque unveiling, the newspaper said.
Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Digital Affairs
In response, the ministry in a statement said that accusations of excess “traveling” were unfair to its personnel and that all authorized trips had to meet the regulatory guidelines set forth by the Executive Yuan.
The ministry’s representatives visited a score of nations to attend important discussions concerning joint cyberdefense, e-commerce and telecommunication infrastructure with the US, the UK, the EU, Southeast Asian nations, Israel and Japan, the statement said.
The nation’s policy regarding digital resilience, industrial upgrades, infrastructure building and cyberdefense can only be implemented if officials are allowed to attend in-person and virtual events for the purpose of meeting governmental and private-sector actors, it said.
Taiwanese officials took part in the discussions of numerous international organizations, including the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre, the Freedom Online Coalition and the Fast Identity Online alliance, it added.
They additionally conducted governmental talks with Washington, Tokyo and other partners to bolster cyberdefenses and bring the nation’s Internet in line with next-generation standards, the statement said.
These trips were successful in facilitating Taiwan’s diplomatic bid to take part in international governmental organizations as a sovereign state, it said, citing for example the nation’s participation in the World Wide Web Consortium.
Allegations about governmental efforts to combat cyberfraud and regulate social media’s appropriation of news content stemmed from a misunderstanding of the ministry’s strictly auxiliary role in assisting the appropriate agencies in implementing those policies, the statement said.
The ministry was tasked with a support role in enacting the anti-fraud action plan version 1.5 specifically with regard to online crime prevention and deterrence, it said.
Telecoms at the ministry’s prompting have implemented measures to protect the identity of subscribers, while officials are drafting regulations for third-party payments and creating an authenticated texting platform for all governmental agencies, it added.
A new ministry must quickly to meet the public’s expectations, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Liu Shyh-fang (劉世芳) said at a party news conference.
However, the ministry cannot be expected to tackle digital fraud alone and other agencies involved in the effort have been urged to strengthen their collaboration with the ministry, Liu said.
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