The Ministry of Digital Affairs published a mandatory logging template Tuesday that requires central-government agencies to document training data sources, model versions, and human review steps for chatbots that answer citizen questions online.
The template implements portions of the Artificial Intelligence Basic Act that took effect in January, translating high-level principles into fields agencies must fill before deploying new assistants on portals handling taxes, visas, and social insurance.
What agencies must record
Each log entry must list the dataset's origin, whether personal data was anonymized, and which official signed off on prompt changes. Agencies must also note if a model vendor hosted weights outside Taiwan and describe failover plans when cloud regions go offline.
MODA officials said the format is intentionally plain text so ministries can store logs in existing records systems rather than buying new software. Cybersecurity teams will receive automated hashes weekly to detect tampering.
Sector regulators retain authority
Health and labor ministries will add domain-specific checklists for medical triage bots and employment counseling tools. MODA stressed that competent authorities still decide whether a use case is high risk, but they must use the shared taxonomy when describing hazards to the cabinet.
Industry groups representing systems integrators said the template will slow sales cycles initially but could reduce rework when audits uncover missing documentation. Startups pitching retrieval-augmented generation stacks are preparing sample logs to speed procurement.
Public accountability
Civil society organizations asked MODA to publish aggregated statistics on how many chatbots are live and how often humans override model answers. The ministry promised a quarterly dashboard starting in December but said vendor trade secrets may be redacted.
For residents, the practical effect is invisible until something goes wrong. When a bot misstates a visa rule, investigators will now have a paper trail showing who trained the model and when, a baseline the government argued was missing during earlier experiments with automated call centers.
Local context
Procurement officers at two ministries said they will pilot the log format on internal HR bots before touching public tax FAQs.
Officials said they will publish another update after the Double Ten holiday, when agencies return to normal staffing and contractors can resume noisy work without conflicting with downtown ceremonies. Residents can sign up for text alerts through city portals if they want construction or traffic notices pushed to their phones.