g0v (gov zero)
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)
- 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.
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.