The Executive Yuan will be hosting a third online forum on amendments to regulations governing the virtual world at 7 p.m. tomorrow, this time focusing on the topics of distance education and charging open data fees only in exceptional cases.
Streamed live on LIVEhouse.in, the meeting will bring together competent authorities, scholars, experts and online groups to exchange views on the topics. Participants will also discuss messages left by the general public on the legal discussion platform vTaiwan.tw.
The event is part of a series of forums hosted by the government to explore the new legal relationships that arise from virtual world developments and technological advances. After approving a plan last December to align regulations with the evolving virtual world, the Executive Yuan also tapped the vTaiwan.tw platform—established by the online community g0v.tw—to seek broad public consensus on how best to adjust the regulatory framework for online activities.
The first two online meetings were held in March to discuss close corporations, crowdfunding, and taxation of online transactions, generating lively exchanges among many netizens and professionals in the field.
For tomorrow's forum, the first topic will focus on the wave of distance learning triggered by rapid advances in web-based technologies. In recent years, massive open online course platforms offering educational resources have seen astonishing growth, the Executive Yuan said. Coursera, for instance, has enrolled over 1.9 million online students from 196 countries; and the Khan Academy's 4,000-plus educational videos have aided 75 million students in more than 30,000 classrooms worldwide and have been viewed over 230 million times. These trends have also raised discussions regarding the recognition of academic credits or degrees from distance-learning classes.
The second topic concerns principles for charging open data fees in exceptional cases only. Providing open access to government data would not only improve the public's understanding of government operations, but also allow people to add value or use the data in new ways, and deepen citizens' participation in the democratic process, the Executive Yuan said.
In a free and open society like Taiwan, the Internet community possesses enormous collective strength. One example that caught the nation's attention last year was an open political donation project launched by an online group, where netizens worked together to digitize 300,000 political donation records in just 24 hours. Around the world, the governments that offer open data either charge users or provide it free of charge, and Taiwan is currently considering which approach to take.
Public demands for distance education and open data are topics of high priority for the government, said the Executive Yuan. The government welcomes all to join the discussions at the online forum tomorrow.