China to launch digital yuan next year to replace cash www.rt.com

The People’s Bank of China has revealed plans to have its sovereign digital currency ready in time for the 2022 Winter Olympics. The announcement comes as the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated a shift away from paper money.
Limited trials are already underway in Shenzhen, Suzhou, Chengdu and the Xiongan New Area in the northern province of Hebei, said the central bank’s governor Yi Gang. He told reporters that China’s government plans to run pilot tests at Olympic venues, though there remains no official timetable for a release.

Mongolia reports 13 new COVID-19 cases www.xinhuanet.com

Mongolia's National Center for Communicable Disease on Thursday reported 13 new cases of COVID-19, taking the nationwide tally to 161.

Ulaanbaatar enters StartupBlink ranking for the first time www.montsame.mn

A global startup ecosystem map and research center StartupBlink released The StartupBlink 2020 Global Rankings Report.

Recycling centers and plants marked on map www.montsame.mn

A study shows that the amount of waste sent to landfills in Mongolia increases by 281 tons every year and Ulaanbaatar alone accounts for 150 tons of it.

Mongolia and Kazakhstan to swap nationals with charter flight www.news.mn

Mongolian Deputy Prime Minister U.Enkhtuvshin has held a meeting with the Ambassador of Kazakhstan to Mongolia, Zhalgas Adilbayev, regarding mutually repatriate the two countries nationals with a charter flight. According to a source, more than 1000 Mongolian nationals have applied to return to home from Kazakhstan. Over 100 Kazakhs who are currently staying in Bayan-Ulgii Province in western Mongolia have contacted the embassy requesting to return home.

Mongolia tightens control over diplomatic travel www.news.mn

Mongolian Cabinet updated the regulations for possessing, issuing and holding diplomatic and official passports and tightened the liability of passport holders. Under the new regulation, Mongolian diplomats must now hand their passports over at border checking points after returning from business trips. Subsequently, the diplomat passports will be held by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Mongolia; the next time, the diplomats in question, is due to travel abroad, they will receive their passports for the trip..

"Mongolia ranks 2nd in percentage of population repatriated from abroad" www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/. The operative team of the State Emergency Commission reports that a total of 8,498 citizens have returned from 30 countries since the state of readiness was raised, restrictions were imposed on border movement, and commercial flights were stopped amid concerns over the coronavirus outbreak.

Social media and public discourse in Mongolia www.fes-asia.org

Social media is a dominating force in public discourse. In the case of Mongolia, proactive and transparent use by public health authorities has helped limiting the spread and impact of misinformation, populist messages and fear.

The impact of social media on Mongolia’s young and fragile democracy is ambivalent. On the one hand, there is a clear benefit from more direct and open communication of politicians, journalists, and scientists. But on the other hand, digital populism with all its detrimental effects on democratic discourse has been rising for several years.

Creating trust in public health authorities

In Mongolia, the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the more positive aspects of social media’s impact on society. Surely Facebook, and to a lesser extent Twitter, were used for increased attempts of social media fraud, hacking, fake charities, fake news, and the spread of misinformation. But important, though, was its successful proactive use by the Ministry of Health.

Since January, the ministry has been providing daily updates on COVID-19, informing the public on the global spread of the virus, the country’s number of cases, and measures the ministry is taking. Those briefings quickly became the main source of information for the public and limited the potential spread of misinformation and fear significantly. In addition to its regular updates, the government developed information dashboards, infographics, a series of cartoon videos advising kids for prevention measures, and translated materials, which help equipping the public with knowledge and information while building trust in public health measures.

Changing the tone of public discourse

Mongolia also can serve as an example of how social media can set and change the tone in public discourse on certain issues. The first COVID-19 case that hit Mongolia was recorded on 15 March 2020. The patient, who has now recovered, was a French citizen who did not follow the two-week self-isolation warning when he entered the country. At first, the situation escalated quickly when Mongolians expressed their discontent, calling out on all foreigners for having a neo-colonial attitude by ignoring the country’s strict quarantine rules. But quickly the tone of this conversation shifted from discriminatory to compassionate after a letter from a Mongolian grade 5 student to the French patient was made public. The letter expressed the girl’s concerns for the French patient’s physical and mental health. Although the letter was not published through Facebook, a photo of that letter emerged on the platform and went viral. The French citizen’s reply and its translation followed suit and went viral as well. Subsequently, hatred gave way to compassion. The Frenchman was even awarded a Mongolian nickname: Ankh-Otgon, which loosely translates to First-Last, meaning that he was hoped to be the first and last case of COVID-19 in Mongolia. This kind of positive viral story demonstrates how quickly the tone of public attitude and behaviours can be changed on social media.

Criticizing government actions

Another hot topic on social media was the evacuation of Mongolians stranded abroad. Since all known cases of COVID-19 in Mongolia were imported from abroad, public opinion was (and still is) split on the issue of Mongolians returning home. A large-scale repatriation effort would naturally lead to an increased risk to those already in the country. Many families with relatives stuck abroad, most of them in hard hit countries like the US, China and South Korea, criticized the government for not doing enough. Frustrated citizens took matters on social media, calling out the government or the State Emergency Commission for selecting citizens for repatriation based on their power, money, and relationships. Those citizens are getting organized in a Facebook group (11,790 members) demanding action from the President and the Prime Minister of Mongolia. In addition, the movement also calls family and friends in Mongolia to “Do not Forgive – Do not Vote”.

The parliamentary election scheduled for 24 June complicates this matter even further. Parties and candidates are using social media as their main communication platform. Without bringing in many of the stranded citizens, the parliamentary election could be overshadowed by the new public movement, while at the same time, evacuating citizens prior to the election could mean increased public health risk.

Social media is instantaneous and more viral than the current pandemic in reaching people. These stories from Mongolia affirm the possible positive impact of social media in the current crisis by building solidarity and offering tools for citizen to get organized and voice their concerns.

Mongolia reports 7 new COVID-19 cases, 6 recoveries www.xinhuanet.com

Mongolia's National Center for Communicable Disease reported seven new confirmed COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, bringing the nationwide tally to 148.

Mongolia Mobile App Lets Citizens Say Where Taxes Get Spent www.asiafoundation.org

The promise of technology to engage citizens and transform the ways we manage cities is no longer a dream. Today it’s a necessity, and cities across the globe are eagerly trying new approaches, improving their online platforms, and making more and better use of technology.

Even before social distancing became a troublesome necessity, Mongolia’s capital city, Ulaanbaatar, had been increasing the pace of its transition to online platforms and tools, and the benefits of these timely preparations can be seen vividly in the city’s response to Covid-19. In the best of times, these improvements—using websites, mobile applications, databases, remote sensors, and other tools—can deliver urban services more efficiently and create new pathways for citizen engagement. During the pandemic, they are giving citizens new ways to stay involved in their democracy and make their voices heard on important civic matters, even while practicing social distancing and limiting in-person gatherings.

The ger districts of Ulaanbaatar are sprawling, unplanned neighborhoods that suffer from unequal access to basic public services including electricity, water, waste and sewage disposal, and heating. (Photo: Tsegts Media, 2020)

The Asia Foundation’s Urban Governance Project, funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, is an ongoing collaboration with the Municipality of Ulaanbaatar (MUB) to find creative new approaches to public services and civic engagement. As part of this effort, the project has been working with MUB to launch an electronic voting tool that will allow citizens to register their opinions on local infrastructure priorities. The new system is integrated with MUB’s existing SmartUB mobile application, which has already made its mark as a digital platform for improvements in urban governance.

The new electronic voting tool allows users to weigh in on investments by the Local Development Fund (LDF), which allocates monies provided by the national government for local projects to improve the urban environment. The LDF is a pioneering experiment in participatory budgeting, the only one like it in Mongolia. LDF voting in the past has relied on paper-based household questionnaires—one response per household—followed up with local community meetings, but social-distancing restrictions to fight Covid-19 have taken this traditional approach off the table for the 2020 cycle. So, for the first time, MUB has moved to a fully online voting system.

The 2018 and 2019 trials of the voting app, in limited areas of the city, collected 13,000 and 76,000 votes, respectively. For 2020, the app was scaled up to cover the entire city. Roughly 347,000 citizens—159,000 men and 187,000 women—participated in the process and shared their opinions, a remarkable 43 percent of the eligible population.

Bagakhangai, Nalaikh, and Chingeltei districts piloted the SmartUB mobile app in 2018 and 2019 and had the highest rates of participation in 2020. The participation rate in Bagakhangai district was greater than 100% due to a government decision to register internal migrants in that district during Q1, a practice previously banned, resulting in more eligible voters than the previous year’s official figure.Enabling household members to vote individually was one of the key improvements made possible by the mobile application, allowing men and women young and old, not just household heads, to make their own opinions heard. Where voting had previously been restricted to one vote per household, the fully deployed e-voting system gave a vote to every citizen.To support the citywide deployment, local government officials were active at the neighborhood level, calling residents and offering guidance and support for elderly citizens and those who had trouble with the technology.

In ger khoroos, both men and women voted for public safety, in the form of streetlights and closed-circuit television (CCTV), as well as other redevelopment priorities.

The new voting app also significantly improves operational efficiency at the city’s smallest administrative unit, the khoroo. Collecting citizen inputs every year had been a major undertaking. Distributing and retrieving paper questionnaires and entering the data were extremely laborious. And despite the hard work, the process could not guarantee an accurate portrait of the popular will, because of the restricted participation and shortage of resources for data analysis.

Furthermore, the lack of an effective communication channel back to respondents to share information about which projects were chosen and completed, combined with doubts that LDF community meetings represented a true cross-section of the community, limited the perceived quality of engagement, and citizens often remained uninformed of final decisions.

In non-ger khoroos, closed-circuit television, childrens’ playgrounds, and a greener environment were the most-voted-for infrastructure improvements among both men and women.

The new LDF mobile application solves a number of these problems. Automatic data aggregation and visualizations allow both decision-makers and citizens to track the polling results with useful tables and graphs. The app has also significantly reduced the burden of data management and analysis for local officials.

Uranchimeg Sonom, an official of the fourth khoroo in Ulaanbaatar’s Baganuur District, says, “I collected citizen votes on the LDF using paper forms for five years, and it was a very lengthy process.” In 2018, Baganuur District became one of the first to pilot and then adopt the electronic voting system in all of its khoroos. Uranchimeg says the fourth khoroo was able to build ramps, communal wells, and bus stops using the LDF app’s voting results to set priorities.

A bridge funded by the LDF provides a shorter route for citizens to get water from communal wells. (Photo: Tsegts Media, 2020)

With the 2020 e-vote now complete, the review of the data has begun. Looking across the city, those living in apartment complexes mostly voted for children’s playgrounds, more green areas, and the installation of more security cameras. Ger district residents wanted streetlights and revamped urban planning, followed by more security cameras. The investment priorities from the LDF e-vote process show that residents want improvements that will produce safer and more livable environments. The LDF application will keep them informed of the government’s decisions on these investments, provide updates on project implementation, and, hopefully, demonstrate just how meaningful their participation has been.

Bakhytgul Titov is a senior project officer and Khaliungoo Ganbat is a project manager for The Asia Foundation’s Urban Governance Program in Mongolia. Mark Koenig is the Foundation’s Mongolia country representative. They can be reached at bakhytgul.titov@asiafoundation.org, khaliungoo.ganbat@asiafoundation.org, and mark.koening@asiafoundation.org, respectively. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the authors, not those of The Asia Foundation.