Taiwan Civic Tech Ecosystem and Needs Survey

The 127 responses fall roughly into three groups:

• The Curious: 26 people who have heard of or seen civic tech, but have not actually got involved.
• The Users: 54 people who know the community but have not worked on any project.
• The Builders: 47 people who have actually worked on at least one civic tech project. Later questions about "what got stuck" and "what keeps people going" were answered only by these 47, because they asked about specific project experience.

Most respondents are aged 31 to 50: 35% are 31 to 40 and 29% are 41 to 50, while only 5.5% are 20 or under. By gender, 50% are men, 41% women, and 9% other or prefer not to say.

Respondents come from a wide range of work backgrounds: freelancers and nonprofit workers are the largest groups, at 20% each, followed by schools or research institutions (16%), companies or startups (16%), students (13%) and the public sector (8%). Of the 55 who told us more about their organization, 27% work at nonprofits and associations, 25% at academic and research institutions, and 22% at companies and startups. People who care about civic tech come from many industries and organizations, not one field.

But looking only at where people live understates how far their connections reach. The survey also asked "Besides where you live, which regions do you have close ties to?" 63 people answered: 34 named places in central, southern or eastern Taiwan (such as Taichung, Tainan, Kaohsiung and Hualien), and 14 mentioned places overseas. Even among the 79 who live in Taipei or New Taipei, 20 also have close ties to central, southern or eastern Taiwan, and 8 to places overseas. Most respondents live in the capital region, but their personal networks reach much further.

Of all respondents, 47% (60/127) have never been to a g0v.tw event. Even among the 47 Builders, 28% (13/47) have never been to a g0v.tw event.

When asked "Where do you get information about civic tech?", 59% chose "nonprofit organizations", more than the 54% who chose "open source communities (including g0v.tw)". g0v.tw is an important hub in the ecosystem, but not the only way in.

The survey asked which roles people have played in civic tech projects (more than one answer allowed). Among the 101 who have had contact with civic tech: 89% have used a tool or joined a discussion, 48% have helped put something into use or spread it, 33% have helped plan, build, design or maintain a project, 28% have started a project, and 17% have provided money or mobilized resources.

46 people (46%) ticked only one role; just 10 (10%) ticked all five. A large group sticks to one thing, while a small group does almost everything, and the spread in between is uneven. The more deeply involved people are, the more roles they usually take on at once.

The survey also asked a single-choice question: "Which statement best describes what you do in the civic tech community?" The five options run from the least to the most say over a project's direction: Follow (read about issues and results), Report (provide information when a project asks, such as road conditions or pollution data), Join (help get things done on projects others started), Co-design (define the problem and design the solution with others) and Start (spot a problem, find partners and launch a project). Another 6 people chose "None of these fits me", which is left off this scale. Of the 101, 41% chose the lightest level, "Follow".

Of the 46 who ticked only one role, 42 ticked the one with the lowest bar, "used a tool or joined a discussion", and 30 of them were at the "Follow" level of involvement. "Doing only one thing" largely reflects "being lightly involved".

One more thing worth noting: people who build projects have not necessarily used other people's civic tech. 38 people ticked "helped plan, build, design or maintain" or "started a project" (counting those who ticked both only once), and 7 of them (18%) did not tick "used a tool or joined a discussion".

Each of the 47 described in one sentence "what problem their most recent project aims to solve". After sorting these by hand into 11 categories, the most common topic was environment and ecology, with 7 people (15%). Second was "Other", with 6 people (13%), covering topics such as housing, health care, energy and digital identity. Next came education and learning, community-building and collaboration tools, and disaster prevention and public safety, with 5 people each (11%); then political oversight and open parliament, land use, cities and local communities, and public discussion and opinion tools, with 4 each (9%). The rest were transport and roads (3 people), working with government and civil servants (2), and fact-checking misinformation (2).

Of these, 15 people's projects deal with topics that require working with the public sector. This fits with Chapter 7, where "Working with government" was the most wanted event.

The survey looks at the same people from two angles: their overall experience, not tied to any one project (this chapter), and "the project they worked on most recently" (Chapters 3 to 5). The two are kept separate, because someone who often starts projects in the community may not be the founder of the project they worked on most recently.

Only the 47 Builders answered these questions. The survey listed 13 common difficulties and asked them to rate each one. We use two measures: a rating of 3 or higher (3, 4 and 5 combined) means the problem really held back progress; 4 or higher (4 and 5 combined) means it was bad enough to make them want to quit.

The top three problems were keeping progress steady, getting results to make a difference, and a few people holding everything up. "Can't find partners who want to work on it together", the one most people would think of first, ranked fourth. These three may feed into each other: when momentum breaks, results are slow to appear; without results, it is harder to show the project is worth the effort; fewer people step in, and the load falls back on the few.

Among these respondents, those more deeply involved and with more say were more likely to face core-member burnout (quite likely their own) and to worry that the results would not make a difference.

On the item "Newcomers or people who can't code don't know how they can help", the people who feel it most are at the shallow end: 2 of 6 (33%) in the Report group, 1 of 5 (20%) in the Follow group, 1 of 8 (12%) in the Join group, 0% (0/18) in the Co-design group, and 1 of 10 (10%) in the Start group.

People less involved were more likely to worry about how newcomers who can't code could help. As people gain more say in a project, this worry broadly gets lower. So if you want to plan how to bring newcomers in, asking only founders and decision-makers may not get you the answer, because it is not a problem they face themselves.

The survey also asked an optional question, "Did you take any action to deal with these difficulties?" 28 people answered.

The two most common responses pointed in opposite directions: reaching out for help (6 people), or slowing down and lowering expectations (5 people). The second group mostly let things take their course rather than push for progress. Counting them together with the 6 who took no particular action or only described the difficulty, 11 of the 28 either chose to lower their expectations or did nothing in particular.

"Retention rate" means the same person chose the same motive both times. "Net change" looks at how the number of people rose or fell: those who chose a motive when they first joined, plus those who picked it up later, minus those who no longer give it as a reason, shown as a percentage of the starting number. The two look at different things, so they rank motives differently. For example, "People around me were doing it, so I joined" had the lowest retention rate of the six, at 67%; but because the 4 people who dropped it matched the 4 who picked it up, its net change is still 0% and the total did not change.

Believing in a project's goal is the most common reason people take part, and the reason that best sustains them over time.

Identifying with the community had the biggest net drop of the six motives: 20 people chose it at first, and 17 do now. Of the original 20, 6 (30%) no longer give it as a reason, while 3 others picked it up later. This is worth looking into: did the people who stopped naming the community as a reason gradually lose their sense of belonging along the way?

Only two motives grew overall: "building a portfolio and sharpening skills" and "Meet new people and like-minded friends". The first grew more, and it is a goal-oriented motive.

Looking only at why people stay, there are some differences by age. Among those 30 and under, 4 of 10 (40%) chose "building a portfolio and sharpening skills", higher than 19% across all Builders. Among those 41 and over, "believing in the goal" stands out at 89%, and the biggest gaps are "just for fun" and "identifying with the community", 21 and 20 percentage points below the overall figures.

But each age group has only 10 to 19 people, so these generational differences are an early observation, worth tracking again as more responses come in.

Which resources did the 47 Builders use on their most recent project? Personal networks came first, used by 66%, followed by "Funding" (47%), then public or open data (45%) and venues (40%). Another 23% said they "Mostly figured it out myself".

Skills project members contributed (more than one answer allowed): topic research and project management tie for first at 51% each, followed by marketing and outreach (45%), admin and logistics (40%) and writing (38%). Coding is sixth at 28%. The rest are building rapport and relationships (23%), UX/UI design (17%) and visual design (15%).

You don't have to code to take part in a project. As Chapter 7 shows, 35% of the 26 Curious who have not taken part listed "I'd need to know how to code; the bar is too high" as a reason for not joining. But among the 47 Builders, fewer than three in ten wrote code; more worked on researching the topic, managing progress, promoting results and writing. This echoes the pain point in Chapter 3, stalled progress. From this we can even infer that projects may need people who can manage more than people who can code.

Asked how much time they spent on the project in the past 30 days: 1 to 5 hours was the most common answer (32%), followed by 6 to 20 hours and "almost none", tied at 23% each; 21 hours or more came to 21%.

More than half of the Builders spend less than 5 hours a month on their project, which echoes the problem in Chapter 3, "Progress is hard to keep steady": when most members move a project forward in spare moments, it is no surprise that progress comes in fits and starts. At the other end, 21% spend 21 hours or more a month, close to a part-time job. The community has both occasional contributors and people who are deeply committed.

27 respondents have given financial support to civic tech projects. 27 is a small group, so the figures below show this group's tendencies and are best used as a starting point for understanding funders.

The factors received fairly similar levels of attention, except "I happened to have budget at the time", which was low. This suggests that most money supporting civic tech is planned. Projects seeking funding should keep track of possible funding sources, assess their impact, and explain clearly how they will solve the problem.

These 27 funders are almost all insiders: 20 have worked on a project, 6 have had contact with the community but not worked on a project, and only 1 has just heard of or seen civic tech. The money this survey captured comes mostly from people already in the community, not from outside funders.

Of the 27 funders, 52% think projects "still at a very early stage, just an idea" have the hardest time finding resources, followed by projects "already launched and needing long-term upkeep" (37%). Projects that "have a prototype and are moving toward real-world use" are seen most positively: only 11% think they struggle to find resources. This ties in with Section 6.1: funders care about a clearly explained problem, and at the idea stage, without concrete results to show, it is harder to convince them.

For the multiple-choice question "Through which channels do you currently hear about g0v.tw events?", the top single options were g0v.tw's social media accounts (Facebook, Threads, Instagram) and friends or family, at 40% each, followed by g0v.tw's Slack (23%), Jothon's monthly newsletter (19%) and Jothon's LINE group (12%). Another 11% said "None; I didn't really know about these channels".

If we combine the five official channels (social media, Slack, newsletter, LINE group and the events page), counting each person only once, official channels clearly reach more people than friends and family do.

Among the 26 Curious who have not taken part (up to 3 reasons each): the top three reasons are not knowing which projects or issues exist (62%, 16/26), having no one around to show the way and worrying about not fitting in or being any help (54%, 14/26), and not knowing how to join or where to start (50%, 13/26). All three are about missing information and a way in, not about ability. The stereotype that civic tech requires tech skills does not hold up: "I'd need to know how to code; the bar is too high" comes fourth, at 35% (9/26).

The survey asked which events people would most like to sign up for (up to 2 choices). Across all respondents, the most popular was "Working with government" (57%), followed by "Civic tech in practice" (51%) and "Intro to the database" (49%). "Pitching with AI" was chosen least (33%).

Comparing the three groups shows different preferences. "Intro to the database" is the most popular among the 26 Curious, at 69% (18/26), but only 36% (17/47) among the 47 Builders, possibly because people already doing projects tend to know the existing projects and need an introduction less. "Working with government" is the opposite: it is the event the Builders most want (62%, 29/47), while demand among the 26 Curious is relatively low (46%, 12/26).

The results show that all five candidate article topics fall into "Attractive", with "How to get what you built into real use, including within government" closest to "Performance". These topics add value for respondents, but when they answered, none had reached the basic level of "people would complain if it were missing".

Looking at the three groups separately shows one difference: "How to get more people involved" and "How to keep partners" are "Indifferent" for the 26 Curious, who have heard of or seen civic tech but not got involved, yet "Attractive" for both other groups. This may reflect that people who have not engaged deeply with civic tech feel the pain of running a team and keeping it going less keenly.

Besides article topics, the survey asked which issue areas respondents most want data lists for, and which cross-cutting tools they most want introduced (both questions allowed more than one answer):

Cross-cutting tools: crowdsourcing and reporting tools were chosen most (61%), followed by AI applications (54%) and data visualization tools (52%), then GIS and mapping tools (42%), opinion-gathering and online deliberation tools (33%), finding existing research (31%), and finally open collaborative knowledge bases (19%).

Issue areas: the data lists respondents most want to see first are government budgets, spending and procurement (54%), local development and regional revitalization (47%), disaster prevention and response (43%), and misinformation and scam prevention (42%), with environmental pollution (31%) and law and the legislative process (31%) tied after them.

Comparing these tools and issue areas across the three groups shows that their needs and interests differ slightly.

Chapter 7 shows that the biggest barrier for newcomers is not knowing which projects or issues they could join, not a lack of technical skill or ability. Civic Tech Taiwan, the database run by g0v.tw Jothon, already lists many projects and how-to guides. With these basics in place, the next question is: how can the database reach each newcomer at the right moment, just as they want to get started?

Newcomers' other big difficulty is "no one around to show the way". g0v.tw Jothon has tried many ways to connect first-timers at g0v.tw hackathons with experienced members, yet many people still hold back because they have no one to guide them. How could a better way of introducing newcomers be designed? Or does stepping through the door simply require newcomers to put in more effort themselves? These are questions worth continuing to explore.