Taiwan Salon Season 4 Episode 7: Ipa Chiu on Building Democracy through Open-Source Technologies

“Don’t ask why nobody is doing this, you are the NOBODY.”Confronted with frequent natural disasters—such as earthquakes and typhoons—and ongoing political challenges, including Chinese coercion, Taiwan has cultivated a resilient and highly creative civil society. Within this dynamic ecosystem, civic technology stands out as a distinctive force, blending grassroots activism with digital innovation to tackle complex social and governance problems.In this episode of Taiwan Salon, GTI Communications Associate Yuchen Lee and Summer 2025 Intern Tracy Weener interview Ipa Hsiao-wei Chiu (瞿筱葳), the Co-Founder of Taiwan’s largest civic tech community, g0v (台灣零時政府). Ipa explains what makes Taiwan's civic tech community unique and how it thrives throughout this past decade, highlighting ‘openness’ as the core value of this long-standing digital activism.Useful linksg0v’s website: https://g0v.tw/intl/en/The book on Taiwan’s civic tech community and the story of g0v, “The NOBODY Movement: Civic Hackers and Digital Activism in Taiwan”: https://a.co/d/6QI27cPg0v Summit 2026: https://summit.g0v.tw/2026/Sch001 零時小學校 (g0v Elementary School): https://sch001.g0v.tw/The Minecraft Project by g0v Elementary School : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj4M7d3qBtk