What is g0v?

A civic open-source community of volunteers started by Taiwanese programmers in 2012. It "rebuilds" government websites in clearer, easier-to-use form and tackles civic problems at regular hackathons. It gave rise to vTaiwan, the mask map, the fact-checking service Cofacts and more.

A government website so confusing that you can't find the information you need: most people have been there. In Taiwan, programmers who were fed up with this did more than complain. They built clearer versions themselves. Their community is g0v (pronounced "gov-zero"; in Chinese, 零時政府).

In short

g0v is a volunteer community of programmers, designers, journalists and other citizens in Taiwan. It turns government information into forms anyone can understand, and builds tools to solve social problems [1][2].

The name replaces the "o" in "gov.tw", the ending of Taiwanese government website addresses (domains), with a "0" (zero) [1]. It also carries the sense of rethinking government from zero [2].

For example

Making the government budget visible (2012). According to g0v's official introduction, it happened in October 2012, the night before a hackathon (an event where people build things intensively over a short time) held by an internet company [2]. IT people interested in social issues were annoyed by government advertising for its economic policies. So they suddenly changed their project and, in three days, built a site that showed the whole national budget as charts [2].

According to the Chinese-language Wikipedia, this project won a prize, and Kao Chia-liang, 吳泰輝, Ipa Chiu (瞿筱葳) and others used the rest of the prize money to hold another hackathon, which started g0v [3]. The official introduction dates that hackathon to December 1, 2012, and says this is where the community formally got going [2]. To host the site, Kao registered "g0v.tw", one character away from "gov.tw" [4].

Livestreaming the Sunflower Movement (2014). In 2014, students occupied the Legislative Yuan, Taiwan's parliament. According to the book Plurality, hundreds of g0v members were there during the occupation, "aiding in broadcasting, documenting and communicating civic actions" [1].

The book Broad Listening writes that more than 100 people were involved in the livestream, centered on a g0v team with event-setup skills [4]. Audrey Tang, later Taiwan's digital minister, is known for laying 350 meters of network cable. But, the book says, this was not the story of a single hero: it was made possible by the efforts of many citizens [4].

The MoeDict dictionary and more. According to a footnote in Plurality, the Chinese dictionary MoeDict, an early g0v project, "was led by one of the authors of this book" (Tang) [1]. Among the projects that grew out of g0v, the Chinese-language Wikipedia lists MoeDict, the fact-checking service Cofacts and election voting guides [3].

How it works

Fork and merge

According to the book, g0v's civic hackers took data from government websites and put the same content, presented in other ways, on g0v.tw [1]. In software, making a branch off an original is called a "fork".

These "forked" versions often became more popular than the originals [1]. Then some government ministers, like Simon Chang, began "merging" the designs back into government services [1]. Folding changes back in is called a "merge".

Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, draws attention to this approach in his review of the book [5]. Improvements are born in small branches and then taken back into the mainstream of society. Buterin argues that this rapid cycle is a distinctive feature of Tang and Weyl's vision [5].

"You are the 'nobody'!"

The book names three features of g0v's hackathons [1]: "the diversity of participants (usually a majority non-technical and with nearly full gender parity), the orientation towards civic problems rather than commercial outcomes and the close collaboration with a range of civic organizations".

The book says these are summed up by g0v's slogan: "Ask not why nobody is doing this. You are the 'nobody'!" [1]. This, it says, "has led the group to be labeled the 'nobody movement'" [1]. g0v's official FAQ says that 30 to 40 percent of participants do not program [6].

No center, no party

g0v's manifesto, revised in 2019, says that g0v has no single center, representative or person in charge [7]. Participants can choose or start the projects they take part in, and each project decides how it is run [7]. Results are published in a form anyone can use. As the book's footnote puts it, the manifesto defines g0v as "a non-partisan, not-for-profit, grassroots movement" [1][7].

The official FAQ answers the questions of whether g0v is an anti-government organization, and whether it is something like WikiLeaks [6]. Its answer is that g0v presents information the government has already released in more usable ways and supports open data policies, which differs in aim and method from exposing secrets [6].

Three circles

The book shows g0v's principles in a diagram of three overlapping circles [1]: "open-source", "hands-on" and "public-spirited". g0v sits at the center, where all three overlap [1].

Scale

The Chinese-language Wikipedia reports more than 42 hackathons and more than 8,000 contributors across three continents [3]. The book Broad Listening puts the number of participants in its chat space (Slack) at more than 14,000 [4].

What is debated

Tang did not create it. The book names Kao Chia-liang and others as founders [1]. The book Broad Listening points out that at the end of 2014, when vTaiwan began, Tang "was simply a private citizen participating in g0v's civic tech community" [4].
Distance from government. g0v's manifesto describes it as a non-partisan grassroots movement [7]. On the other hand, as the book describes, after the Sunflower Movement the government took up g0v's methods, and a cabinet member began attending g0v meetings [1]. In a 2018 essay, Kao pointed out that even projects that only "open" information already involve interpretation in how they open it [8]. Kao also asked how technologists should face the use of what they build to spread hatred or for surveillance [8].
A case the government did not adopt. An article in The Daily Beast reports that Cofacts, which grew out of g0v, was never adopted as a main tool of the government's fight against disinformation [9]. Legislators, it says, preferred tougher measures such as fines [9].
Research. The anthropologist Mei-chun Lee studied a g0v project that digitized records of political donations [10]. Lee argues that the collaboration itself — citizens typing in paper reports by hand to "open" the data — created a new form of participation [10].

Where it fits in Plurality

g0v is the first case in the book's chapter 2-2, "The Life of a Digital Democracy". The book writes: "More than any other institution, g0v (pronounced gov-zero) symbolizes the civil-society foundation of digital democracy in Taiwan" [1]. "A majority of the initiatives we highlight grew out of g0v and closely aligned projects" [1].

Chapter 3-3 gives HackMD, a tool g0v uses to edit meeting minutes and other documents together, as an example of open collaboration [11]. It also says that civic technology (technology built by citizens for the public good) in other countries has found it hard to have "the systemic, national and thus easily traceable macrolevel impacts that g0v had in Taiwan" [11].

Related articles: - Taiwan's digital democracy — the bigger picture that g0v laid the foundation for - vTaiwan — the space for policy discussion that g0v built - Cofacts — fact-checking that grew out of g0v - Community Notes — a related example of fact-checking by citizens - Civic tech, Kao Chia-liang and the people of g0v and vTaiwan

Sources

Plurality, 2-2 "The Life of a Digital Democracy", sections "g0v" and "Sunflower", Figure 2-2-A and footnote — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/2-2/eng/ ［CC0］
g0v, official introduction (in Chinese) — https://github.com/g0v/g0v.tw/blob/master/md/zh-tw/about/about.md
G0v零時政府, Chinese-language Wikipedia (in Chinese) — https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-tw/G0v%E9%9B%B6%E6%99%82%E6%94%BF%E5%BA%9C ［CC BY-SA 4.0］
Broad Listening, 11-1 "The Evolution of Deliberative Democracy in Taiwan" (in Japanese; English translation in the same repository) — https://github.com/digitaldemocracy2030/broad-listening-book/blob/f69c60c838a91b91668abf109d7093b240610139/en/11_01_taiwan.md ［CC BY-NC 4.0］
Vitalik Buterin, "Plurality philosophy in an incredibly oversized nutshell", section "What are the megapolitics of Plurality?" — https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2024/08/21/plurality.html
g0v, official FAQ (in Chinese) — https://github.com/g0v/g0v.tw/blob/master/md/zh-tw/about/faq.md
g0v Manifesto (revised 2019, in Chinese) — https://github.com/g0v/g0v.tw/blob/master/md/zh-tw/about/manifesto.md
Kao Chia-liang, "寫在 g0v summit 2018 之前" (2018-09-30, in Chinese) — https://medium.com/@clkao/%E5%AF%AB%E5%9C%A8-g0v-summit-2018-%E5%89%8D-5869b6afe462
Nick Aspinwall, "Taiwan Tried to Digitize Democracy With vTaiwan. It Was a Huge Flop" (The Daily Beast, 2023-11-01) — https://www.thedailybeast.com/taiwan-tried-to-digitize-democracy-with-vtaiwan-it-was-a-huge-flop/
Mei-chun Lee, "Free the Data from the Birdcage" (PoLAR, 2020, abstract) — https://doi.org/10.1111/plar.12371
Plurality, 3-3 "The Lost Dao", subsection "Nodes of light" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/3-3/eng/ ［CC0］

We welcome error reports and questions ("What is…?"). Submissions become public issues.

Report an error in this article ・ Ask a question