Founded in Taiwan, "g0v" (gov-zero) is a decentralised civic tech community with information transparency, open results and open cooperation as its core values. g0v engages in public affairs by drawing from the grassroot power of the community. Learn More
g0v is an open community which provides an opportunity for all participants to join the conversation on its social media posts. Because of this, g0v has established certain governance mechanisms. All posts are first checked by members of the community who have admin privileges. To learn more, please read the g0v SNS community governance document.
#beYourOwnAuthor
g0v is a grassroots social movement community dedicated to deepening the civic engagements and connections between the social arena and citizens. You can find like-minded partners in the g0v community, achieve your ideas in a grassroots manner, and then release the results under an open-source license, letting people stand on your shoulders.
g0v replaces "o" in gov with "0", which reimagines the role of government from scratch zero and reflects the vision from 0 to 1 of the digital natives.
g0v.tw primarily operates online with a large hackathon occurring once every two months. Participants propose different projects and call for volunteers. Oftentimes, in addition to meeting at the hackathons, projects will split off, holding their own smaller meetups and hackathons independent of the larger g0v events. This operating mode encourages bottom-up ideation, fostering activism over slacktivism.
(Note: Hackathon is a portmanteau of "hacker" and "marathon", a large-scale event that takes place over the course of one to two days. Volunteers form groups, work, and report their progress. Many projects will meet before the event and form a plan for the day to make sure they can get as much done as possible in the limited time available.)
Members of g0v are both online and offline and come from all fields. The only requirement is that you believe in the principle of open-source collaboration. You don't need to be a software engineer; although most members in the early days of g0v were software engineers, now over 60% of participants are not from a technical background.
Is it a problem if I can’t write code? Not at all!
Originally drafted by ipa, the g0v manifesto, after many rounds of community deliberation and discussion, now clearly represents and define the g0v spirit, the logic of open-source collaboration. It is a kind of "constitution" for the g0v community. If you want to learn more, you can view the g0v Manifesto page.
It is impossible to explain the many sides of g0v in a few sentences. So to learn more about g0v, please watch the keynote speach Kirby gave at OSDC in 2013 on "g0v hackathon - code to refactor society."
Since the first g0v hackathon in late 2012, g0v has hosted 4 international summits, 4 civic tech grants, over 40 hackathons, and over 40 speeches, and g0v has been involved in over 150 media reports. There are now over 8,000 participants from all over the world. Visit g0v Dashboard for more information, or visit Awesome g0v projects by John Huang.
After over 40 hackathons, there have been many projects which have come about. All projects use open-source code and open-source licenses that are open to all. Below are an introduction to some of the projects.
We need a way to organize many dynamic documents before and during hackathons.
Thus, we built this small single-page static web application that reads a list of URLs from an EtherCalc document, rendering it in a way similar to a Google docs folder. If the document supports read-only mode, we use that by default when it is opened by the user, and provide an additional edit link.
Hackfoldr is a collaborative writing platform which makes online note-taking much easier. There are already many projects which have used hackfoldr, including the New Taipei water park fire incident, the Kaohsiung gas explosions, the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement, and the Taiwan Sunflower Student Movement. It is also the most common digital tool used at g0v hackathons.
A LINE chat bot to help separate misinformation from fact.
By adding the Cofacts LINE bot as a friend, you can forward any suspected hoaxes to the chat bot to get a quick fact check.
For the past hundred years, many countries – including Britain and the United States – have collected information about Taiwan in their national archives. We encouraged volunteers to enter these public archives and scan the information, making it an accessible part of the public discourse in Taiwan.
The Taiwan Central Government Budget project supercharges citizens with the power of visualization and social networks to supervise government spending.
By combining interactive techniques like treemaps and bubble charts with a feedback mechanism, this project provides various perspectives on budget data like historical trends, cross-department comparisons, public opinion, and breakdowns of government tax expenditures.
The improved version of the Ministry of Education (MoE) dictionary will include side-by-side translations of English, French, German, and Hokkien; the stroke-order and pronunciation of characters; as well as versions for iOS, Android, and Desktop built on open-source collaboration. The Amis language dictionary and other forked projects are still frequently hosting small hackathons.
All project proposals at g0v hackathons are shared through livestream and accessible through the g0v YouTube channel. If you are interested in g0v hackathons, you can access the media records at g0v Flickr.
Organized by g0v-jothon, the g0v Civic Tech Prototype Grant has helped projects such as "Money-Flow" (金流百科), "Agriculture Loss Value Estimation" (農業災損幾多錢), "Taiwan God Hand Project" (開源神手), "U.S. Taiwan Watch" (美國國會觀測站) and "Voting Guide" (投票指南). For more information on the projects that have been supported by this grant, visit the grant website.
The best way to get to know g0v is to come participate. Whether online or offline, there are many channels to interact with members of the community. If you would like to learn more about open-source collaboration, you can take a look at g0v open-source collaboration guide.
The Bimontlhy g0v Hackathon is our long-running event. Here, you can meet participants of all walks of life. At hackathons, they hack away on their projects before presenting their progress at the end of the day.
The most important thing is, you can participate even if you don't write code! You can find out more details on our Jothon website
Apart from the g0v hackathon, g0v-jothon also regularly holds "infrastructure hackathons" to help maintain the basic community infastructure.
Each community hackathon has a different feel. Often, these events will explain what kind of people are best suited to participate in the information for the event. You can find this information by visitng the g0v facebook group or g0v slack.
In addition to physical events, community members often gather and communicate online as well. Current communications platforms include:
Please be kind and abide by our code of conduct when participating in our online and physical spaces.
In the spirit of our grassroots movement, there are many ways to participate. Here are some additional examples:
g0v's bimonthly hackathons are mostly run by volunteers. The venue, food, and all money required to run the event are all raised by community members. You can also support us through online donation.
DonateThe g0v Jothon Organizing Group stewards the civic hacker community by funding relevant projects. Anyone with a relevant civic hacker project can apply with a proposal.
ProposeCurrently, g0v hackathons only take place in Taiwan, but civic hackers in other countries are beginning to take notice. Does your country have a g0v movement? Why not consider starting a g0v hackathon where you are?
OrganizeIf you want to participate in g0v, but are unsure how, check out our Newcomers Guide!
