The g0v movement, or g0v, (pronounced gov-zero /ɡʌvziroʊ/) is an open source, open government collaboration started by Chia-liang Kao ("clkao"), ipa, kirby and others in late 2012 in Taiwan.[1][2][3]
Originally driven by a bimonthly hackathon, the community has expanded to include different professional and non-information technology background members. Symbolizing the community's efforts to "rethink the role of government from zero," and borrowing the parlance of binary from the digital world of 1s and 0s, the O in "gov" is replaced with a 0 to make "g0v"; for many government agencies in Taiwan which have URLs ending .gov.tw, replacing .gov with .g0v redirects the user to the so-called shadow government,[4] a "forked" version of that agency with contributions by civic hackers. Continuing this inspiration from the software development world, the forked content can then be "merged" back into the government agency's website.
g0v is a community that promotes the transparency of government information and is committed to developing information platforms and tools for citizens to participate in society. As of the beginning of 2014, there have been contributors across three continents, and the results have been released in a free software model that embraces knowledge sharing.