The Changemaker's Action Playbook
How advocates and technologists solve problems together
Claire Cheng 鄭婷宇
FreedomFilmFest 2026
Questions? Tap Q&A in Slido
Opening02 / 47
I'm Claire
Advocate
4+ years at the Open Culture Foundation (OCF), connecting tech communities and advocates
Open Parliament
2021–2023, co-wrote reform commitments with Taiwan's parliament
Project Manager
Now leading LawTrace, making bills easy to follow
Along the way, my view of what tech can do changed a lot
Opening03 / 47
Advocates and technologists work hard, but hit a wall
Advocates: hard to be heard
They know the problem and work hard, but lack tools to scale their impact
Technologists: tools go unused
They build fast and well, but miss what the front line really needs
What if both sides work together?
2026 Taiwan civic tech community survey: of 47 people who had worked on projects, 36% said "it's hard for our results to make an impact"
Warm-up: what is civic tech?04 / 47
Civic tech: see a problem, fix it yourself
Two examples
Solving everyday problems
Mask map: when masks were rationed early in the 2020 pandemic, you could see which pharmacy still had stock
Discussing policy together
vTaiwan: brings people with different views online to find common ground on contested issues
Many projects use open data: data the government publishes for anyone to use freely
INSIDE (2020-02-06) on the mask map; vTaiwan (vtaiwan.tw)
Warm-up: what is civic tech?05 / 47
g0v.tw: Taiwan's civic tech community
Reimagine government from zero
The "o" in "gov" becomes a zero: change through citizen action
Anyone can start a project
Decentralised, no bosses: see a problem, find people, and start building
Open source keeps work alive
All code and data are public, so anyone can carry them forward
g0v.tw (g0v.tw/intl/en)
Warm-up: what is civic tech?06 / 47
How a g0v.tw hackathon works
Every two months, about 100 people from different backgrounds spend a day building together
Pitch a problem
3 minutes on stage, or a sign to recruit people
→
Join a project
Pick a problem you care about
→
Build it
Discuss in groups and make it together
→
Keep going
Each project holds its own mini-hackathons
→
Share openly
Open source, so anyone can build on it
g0v.tw (g0v.tw/intl/en); g0v.tw Jothon team (jothon.g0v.tw)
Warm-up: what is civic tech?07 / 47
Anyone can pitch
Sign up beforehand
People who want to pitch fill in a form before the event
3 minutes on stage
The problem, your progress or idea, and the skills you need
No stage? No problem
Write a sign and recruit people in a corner of the venue
Photo by Jothon CC BY 4.0 (flickr.com/photos/g0v/52814627713)
Dig: pitch · Jump in: join · Pull others in: recruit
Photo by OliverL CC BY 4.0 (flickr.com/photos/g0v/55334175088)
Building in groups
Photo by Jothon CC BY 4.0 (flickr.com/photos/g0v/52814634828)
Good food, good ideas
Photo by Jothon CC BY 4.0 (flickr.com/photos/g0v/52813618287)
Warm-up: what is civic tech?11 / 47
Don't start from scratch: crowd wisdom moves faster
Open source: code, data and documents are public, so anyone can use, study, change and share them
Pick your skill stickers at g0v.tw check-in
Photo by Sc CC BY 4.0 (flickr.com/photos/g0v/52695759574)
Icebreaker: hackathon check-in13 / 47
At a hackathon, this is how I introduce myself
Icebreaker: hackathon check-in14 / 47
Your turn: what's your main skill?
Scan the QR code and answer in Slido
Tap Polls on the right
You'll see this screen
Add as many as you like
e.g. code, design, law, write, research
Today's playbook15 / 47
Today's Action Playbook: 4 actions
Action 1
Bring your skills and join in
Action 2
Find a partner with different skills
Action 3
Before you build, answer three questions
Action 4
Build a demo first, so the government can take over
You've already done Action 0: you've seen the different skills in this room
Action 1 / 4
Bring your skills and join in
You can take part in civic tech without writing code
1Bring your skills2Partner across skills3Three questions first4Build a demo for government
17 / 47Myth: civic tech is only for engineers?
10+ years ago: mostly engineers
It started as a tech community, with few stickers for non-coding skills
Now: people from many fields
Researchers, advocates and designers joined, and the stickers grew more varied
Skill sticker list compiled by the g0v.tw Jothon team, 2024 (g0v.hackmd.io/@jothon/S15aaMFxP)
1Bring your skills2Partner across skills3Three questions first4Build a demo for government
18 / 47Respondents fall into three groups by involvement
2026 survey by the g0v.tw Jothon team (who organise the hackathons), 127 respondents
Curious: heard of it, not yet involved
26 people
Users: used tools, no project yet
54 people
Builders: worked on at least one project
47 people
2026 g0v.tw Jothon team survey, N=127, responses collected until 20 Jul 2026
1Bring your skills2Partner across skills3Three questions first4Build a demo for government
19 / 47Only 28% of project builders write code
What skills the 47 builders have contributed (multiple choice)
Marketing and outreach
45%
Your understanding of the issue is exactly what projects need
2026 g0v.tw Jothon team survey, builders N=47
1Bring your skills2Partner across skills3Three questions first4Build a demo for government
20 / 47Open StarTer Village (openstartervillage.ocf.tw/en), Open Culture Foundation (OCF)
1Bring your skills2Partner across skills3Three questions first4Build a demo for government
21 / 47It's not tech that holds newcomers back
Why the 26 curious people haven't joined yet (up to 3 answers)
Don't know what projects or issues there are
62%
No one to guide me, afraid I won't fit in
54%
Think I need to code (4th)
35%
What's missing is information and someone to guide the way, not tech
2026 g0v.tw Jothon team survey, curious N=26
Newbie tours: guiding first-timers on site
Photo by Jothon CC BY 4.0 (flickr.com/photos/g0v/52813617792)
1Bring your skills2Partner across skills3Three questions first4Build a demo for government
23 / 47Belief in the project's goal is the main reason people stay
Why the 47 builders keep taking part (multiple choice)
Believe in what the project wants to achieve
83%
Identify with the community
36%
Meet new people and like-minded friends
32%
People around me are doing it
26%
Build a portfolio, sharpen my skills
19%
More people now stay to meet like-minded friends or to build a portfolio and skills than when they first joined
2026 g0v.tw Jothon team survey, builders N=47
Action 2 / 4
Find a partner with different skills
Advocates understand the problem, technologists build the tools: together they make an impact
1Bring your skills2Partner across skills3Three questions first4Build a demo for government
25 / 47Advocates bring context, technologists build solutions
Advocates define the problem
On the front line for years, they know where it hurts, who is affected and who to talk to
Technologists build the tools
They organise messy data and build digital tools that make advocacy more efficient
My job at OCF was to connect advocacy groups with tech communities
1Bring your skills2Partner across skills3Three questions first4Build a demo for government
26 / 47Who does what? The Thaubing Footprint example
Linking factory pollution records to financial reports to find the corporate groups behind them
Environmental group gathers pollution data
Green Citizens' Action Alliance compiles published emission data and penalty records
Tech volunteers map company ties
g0v.tw volunteers trace parent–subsidiary shareholdings in financial reports, linking each factory to its group
Linked data exposes the gaps
In 2016 they found the Sixth Naphtha Cracker complex (a large petrochemical complex in Taiwan) had 25,000 readings over the limit in 10 months, yet none was penalised
Thaubing Footprint (thaubing.gcaa.org.tw)
Action 3 / 4
Before you build, answer three questions
How will you reach users? How will you make it easy to take part? Who carries on when volunteers leave?
1Bring your skills2Partner across skills3Three questions first4Build a demo for government
28 / 47Before you start a project, answer three questions
How will you reach users?
Put your tool in the channels people already use every day
How will you make it easy to take part?
Break the work into small tasks: leave the simplest step to the public and the expert parts to the team
Who carries on when volunteers leave?
Publish data and records under open licences, so the next person can pick them up any time
Claire Cheng, "Civic tech project launched, but nobody uses it?" (in Chinese), g0v.tw Jothon team, 2026
1Bring your skills2Partner across skills3Three questions first4Build a demo for government
29 / 47Put your tool in the channels people use every day
Cofacts: check suspicious messages right inside LINE
Closed chats are hard to check
Rumours spread in private groups, and few people visit a fact-checking website
Put a chatbot in the chat
Forward a suspicious message to Cofacts' LINE account and get the volunteers' fact-check
One check helps everyone
Once volunteers check a message, everyone who forwards it later gets the answer straight away
Cofacts (cofacts.tw); LINE is Taiwan's most used chat app, like WhatsApp in Malaysia
1Bring your skills2Partner across skills3Three questions first4Build a demo for government
30 / 47Keep the public's step small, let NGOs do the rest
Disfactory: reporting illegal factories on farmland
Official reports are too hard
The formal process is complicated and requires your name, so residents fear retaliation
The public does the simplest step
Residents just take a photo and mark the location, anonymously
NGOs send the official letter
Citizens of the Earth, Taiwan checks aerial photos and sends one official letter to the government for you. Residents don't need to worry about retaliation
Disfactory (disfactory.tw)
1Bring your skills2Partner across skills3Three questions first4Build a demo for government
31 / 47Work in the open so others can carry it forward
Political Donation Digitisation: three hand-offs in five years led to a law change
Paper locked in an office
In 2014, donation records were only on paper. You had to go to a government office to read them, and you couldn't search them
Small images, many typists
An NGO scanned the records. g0v.tw volunteers cut them into small images. People online typed 300,000 cells in 24 hours
Open data let others take over
Reporters used the open data in their stories. The law changed in 2018, and the government opened its own search website in 2019
Political Donation Digitisation (campaign-finance.g0v.ctiml.tw)
Action 4 / 4
Build a demo first, so the government can take over
Civil society can test ideas fast and share results openly, saving government the risk and cost of starting from scratch
1Bring your skills2Partner across skills3Three questions first4Build a demo for government
33 / 47Why build a demo? Taiwan's push for an open parliament
To make parliament more open (Open Parliament), Taiwan's civil society took three paths
1. Monitor from outside
Use public data to rate legislators and hold parliament accountable
2. Collaborate from inside
Invited to draft an action plan and reform commitments with legislators and civil servants
3. Lead with a demo
Build an open-source tool first and prove it works, so the government can take over any time
1Bring your skills2Partner across skills3Three questions first4Build a demo for government
34 / 47MonitorCollaborateDemonstrate
Path 1: monitor from outside by scoring legislators
Opening the black box
Citizen Congress Watch counts legislators' attendance, questions and bills, so the public asks what a hard-working legislator looks like
Gaming the numbers
Some legislators padded their scores with empty bills and filler speeches: openwashing, transparent on the surface, empty underneath
Years of top-down scoring made it hard for civil society and parliament to build trust and work together
Citizen Congress Watch (ccw.org.tw), founded 2007
1Bring your skills2Partner across skills3Three questions first4Build a demo for government
35 / 47MonitorCollaborateDemonstrate
Path 2: collaborate from inside, as equals
Open Parliament Action Plan: civil society, legislators and parliament's civil servants set reform commitments together
Co-writing as equals worked well
Drafting the commitments, civil society members and civil servants edited one Google Doc together as equals
Fear of blame put the walls back up
At bimonthly meetings, civil servants reported progress defensively, full of trivial detail, and the two sides drifted apart
Key lesson: when civil servants feel "monitored", they get defensive; when they feel they're "working together", they open up
Open Parliament National Action Plan (2021–2024); Claire took part for OCF, 2021–2023
1Bring your skills2Partner across skills3Three questions first4Build a demo for government
36 / 47MonitorCollaborateDemonstrate
Good teamwork, until the term ended
Rotating members, hard to track
New civil society members didn't know the background and struggled to follow each commitment
Groups and tools built trust
OCF ran a study to find the gaps; members tracked each commitment in groups on Trello and built a working rhythm
Not in law, so it ended
Open Parliament had no legal basis; after the new term began, no one convened it and the collaboration stopped
Trello board civil society members used to track commitments; Claire's "OGP Summit Side Event" slides
1Bring your skills2Partner across skills3Three questions first4Build a demo for government
37 / 47MonitorCollaborateDemonstrate
Path 3: a ready-to-use demo for government
Finding bills is a maze
Parliament has over 10 websites; bill data is scattered and in PDFs, so even professionals piece it together across sites
See a whole bill on one page
A cross-disciplinary team (an advocate, OpenFun's data engineers, designers and researchers) built LawTrace: amendment history, review progress and version comparison in one place
Fully open source, ready to use
Code, interface design and cleaned, structured data are all public, so parliament can learn from them or adopt them any time
LawTrace (lawtrace.tw), image shows version comparison; "over 10 websites" from Claire's 2025 Code for Japan Summit slides
1Bring your skills2Partner across skills3Three questions first4Build a demo for government
38 / 47MonitorCollaborateDemonstrate
Open data needs users to start a positive cycle
A useful tool gets more people checking the data, which in turn helps the government fix it
Tools put government data to use
Professionals use LawTrace every day, and others have built an AI gazette-summary site on our open data
Users' error reports fix the source
Errors only surface when people use the data; we pass users' reports to parliament's IT department, which fixes them at the source, so every tool gets more accurate
Without waiting for politicians, a useful tool reopened the door to working with civil servants
Image from Claire's 2026 talk
1Bring your skills2Partner across skills3Three questions first4Build a demo for government
39 / 47This path works, but it has three real limits
- High barrier to build: you need a cross-disciplinary team that understands lawmaking, data and design, and you need funding first
- Maintenance costs money: the site is free for everyone, and OpenFun absorbs the hosting and bug-fixing costs
- No guaranteed result: the government may never adopt it, but the process has brought together people who care about parliamentary transparency
A reminder: tools are amplifiers40 / 47
Tools are amplifiers, not the heart of the solution
I used to think tools could solve everything; then I found good public discussion needs these three things
Design the conversation
Guide discussion with structure, so it doesn't turn into people talking past each other or getting angry
Share enough information
Government and civil society provide clear facts, so people discuss with full knowledge
Include the stakeholders
Make sure everyone truly affected by the policy has a seat and a voice
Digital tools can make these three easier and faster, but can't replace them
A reminder: tools are amplifiers41 / 47
Pol.is: map opinions and find common ground
It's not about who has more votes; it shows where people with different views agree
Vote on other people's views: Agree, Disagree or Pass
Don't see your view? Write it, and others will vote on it
Scan the QR code and vote on the haze; the results will start the workshop discussion
pol.is/4mkbdrjhd8
Recap and first steps42 / 47
Recap: today's Action Playbook
Action 1: Bring your skills
Newbie tours
Action 2: Partner across skills
Thaubing Footprint
Action 3: Three questions first
Cofacts, Disfactory, Political Donation Digitisation
Action 4: Build a demo for government
LawTrace
Recap and first steps43 / 47
Action 0: you've already done it
You've seen the different skills in this room
Recap and first steps44 / 47
What you can start tomorrow
- Action 1 · Bring your skills: start by using a tool, and scan to vote on the haze in Pol.is
- Action 2 · Find a partner: talk to someone with different skills, or reach out to Malaysia's civic tech group Sinar Project
- Action 3 · Three questions first: how will you reach users, make it easy to take part, and keep it going when volunteers leave?
- Action 4 · Build a demo: don't wait for the government to change; turn your idea into a working sample that's easier to assess and take over
Sinar Project (sinarproject.org), a Malaysian civic tech group founded in 2011 that pushes for a more open parliament and government
Recap and first steps45 / 47
Ready to act? See how Taiwan's teams split the work
6 cases
What advocates and technologists each did
Pick a way to split the work
And use it on the issue you care about
In English and Chinese · The QR code on the entrance poster leads here too
fff.claire-cheng.com
Recap and first steps46 / 47
Thank you! Now for Q&A
Questions? Scan the QR code and send them in Slido
Tap Q&A on the left
Type your question here
Recap and first steps47 / 47
References
- 2026 g0v.tw Jothon team survey report (N=127): report.claire-cheng.com/en
- g0v.tw: g0v.tw/intl/en; g0v.tw Jothon team: jothon.g0v.tw
- Mask map: INSIDE, 2020-02-06
- Cofacts: cofacts.tw; vTaiwan: vtaiwan.tw
- Disfactory: disfactory.tw; Political Donation Digitisation: campaign-finance.g0v.ctiml.tw
- Thaubing Footprint: thaubing.gcaa.org.tw
- Citizen Congress Watch: ccw.org.tw
- Claire Cheng, "Towards a more democratic parliament: what Taiwan's first Open Parliament Action Plan achieved, and the reforms still unfinished" (in Chinese), 民主季刊
- Claire Cheng, "Rather than persuading parliament, build a demo: LawTrace's open data advocacy experiment" (in Chinese)
- LawTrace: lawtrace.tw; Pol.is on the haze: pol.is/4mkbdrjhd8; Taiwan Civic Tech Database: civictech.tw
- 6 Taiwanese cases (English and Chinese): fff.claire-cheng.com
- Claire Cheng, "Civic tech project launched, but nobody uses it?" (in Chinese), g0v.tw Jothon team, 2026
- Sinar Project: sinarproject.org
- Photos: g0v.tw Flickr (photographer and licence on each slide)
