---
title: g0v (gov zero)
type: civic tech
status: active
country: TW
website: https://g0v.tw
logo: /assets/org-logos/g0v.svg
contact:
  checked: 2026-07-30
  email: g0v-talks@googlegroups.com
  source: https://g0v.tw/contact
summary: A Taiwanese civic tech community that forks government websites and services
  to make them more open, usable, and participatory — best known internationally for
  co-developing the vTaiwan deliberation platform.
concepts:
- radical-transparency
- e-government
- consensus-mapping
location:
  latitude: 25.033
  longitude: 121.5654
  name: Taipei, Taiwan
  precision: city
news_page: https://g0v.tw/intl/en/event/
ics_feed: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/cpcf6iv5pt9l6gl2ue3svo63e8%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics
events:
- date: '2012-12-01'
  title: First hackathon (Hackath0n) at Academia Sinica — launches the g0v community
  url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G0v_movement
  quote: driven by a bimonthly hackathon
  proof_level: high
  url_checked: '2026-08-10'
  notable: true
- date: '2016-01-01'
  title: g0vhk (Hong Kong branch) founded
  url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G0v_movement
  quote: active g0v communities working on open government data in Taiwan and Hong
    Kong
  proof_level: high
  url_checked: '2026-08-10'
  notable: false
activity:
  manual:
    checked: 2026-06-07
    date: 2026-06-07
    note: website loaded. FYI they have an english version at https://g0v.tw/intl/en/
      . In https://g0v.tw/intl/en/event/ there is a calendar where there appears to
      be various events.
    url: https://g0v.tw/intl/en/event/
  rss:
    checked: 2026-08-17
    note: No feed found
  ical:
    date: 2026-08-08
    note: 'Latest event: COSCUP _ AI 開放治理 & Civic Tech 議程'
    url: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/cpcf6iv5pt9l6gl2ue3svo63e8%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics
    checked: 2026-08-17
  scrape:
    hint: no_markup
    checked: 2026-08-17
    note: News page found, no machine-readable date
last_checked: '2026-05-30'
---

g0v (pronounced "gov zero") is a decentralised, volunteer-driven civic tech community founded in Taiwan in 2012. The name is a pun: replacing the "o" in "gov" with "0" (zero) to create an alternative domain — `g0v.tw` versus `gov.tw` — signalling a parallel, open, citizen-built version of government infrastructure.

## Approach

g0v's model is to "fork" government: take official datasets, services, or information resources and rebuild them in the open, with better usability, transparency, and accessibility. Projects are proposed and worked on collaboratively at hackathons (g0v hackathons are held regularly), and ownership is distributed rather than centralised.

Key g0v outputs have included:

- **vTaiwan** — the open consultation platform used for structured policy deliberation (see [vTaiwan](vtaiwan.md))
- **Join.gov.tw** contributions — civic infrastructure feeding into the government's official participation platform
- Open budget visualisations, legislative trackers, and public data tools

## Culture and governance

g0v operates without a formal leadership structure. Projects are proposed on an opt-in basis, and contributors join whatever they find interesting. The ethos is "don't ask why nobody is doing this — you are nobody." This decentralised model has proven surprisingly durable over more than a decade of activity.

## Key people

- **Chia-liang Kao** — one of g0v's founding contributors in 2012; instrumental in establishing the decentralised civic-tech community that would later co-produce vTaiwan.[^demtech]
- **[Audrey Tang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audrey_Tang)** — g0v contributor from an early stage; later became Taiwan's first Minister of Digital Affairs (2016) and the driving government champion for vTaiwan. The most internationally prominent figure associated with both g0v and Taiwan's digital democracy project.[^demtech]
- **Jason Hsu** — g0v contributor and co-creator of vTaiwan; later became a legislator. Subsequently a critic of the platform's structural limits, famously calling it "a tiger without teeth" and noting that "legislators don't take it seriously."[^demtech][^noveck]

## International influence

g0v is one of the most studied examples of civic tech that has achieved genuine policy influence rather than remaining peripheral. The collaboration between g0v volunteers and Taiwan's digital ministry (under Audrey Tang) produced vTaiwan — a model that has been studied, referenced, and partially replicated in other jurisdictions.

## Links

- Website: [g0v.tw](https://g0v.tw)
- Related: [vTaiwan](vtaiwan.md)

## See also

- [Radical Transparency](../concepts/radical-transparency.md)
- [E-Government](../concepts/e-government.md)
- [Consensus Mapping](../concepts/consensus-mapping.md)
- [vTaiwan](vtaiwan.md)
- [Taiwan's digital democracy experiment: vTaiwan and g0v](../../blog/posts/2026-05-25-taiwan-digital-democracy.md)

[^demtech]: "it has transformed how the government brings stakeholders together, allowing for a more inclusive approach to legislation." Sebastian Cushing Rodriguez, ["Consensus Building in Taiwan, the Poster Child of Digital Democracy"](https://democracy-technologies.org/participation/consensus-building-in-taiwan/), *Democracy Technologies*, 2023.

[^noveck]: "vTaiwan enabled over two hundred thousand people to participate in crafting 26 pieces of national legislation" Beth Simone Noveck, ["Was vTaiwan such a big flop, after all?"](https://bethnoveck.medium.com/was-vtaiwan-such-a-big-flop-after-all-d6b365f916dc), *Reboot Democracy / Medium*, 22 November 2023.