Held from September 12 to 14, Facing the Ocean, a multinational civic tech event, came to a successful conclusion at the Net Zero Institute in Kaohsiung. The event was hosted by g0v in collaboration with Code for Japan and Code for Korea. Garnering over 150 cross-sector participants and featured the first-ever Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea Civil Servant Exchange Session, it embodied a direct dialogue between government officials from the three countries and the civic technology community, jointly generating innovative digital solutions to public issues and demonstrating the vigor of multinational civic collaboration.
The Ministry of Digital Affairs (MODA) consistently promotes public-private partnership, encouraging governments and open communities in building mutual trust and jointly creating a more resilient digital society. Facing the Ocean adheres to the core values of not presetting agenda, letting participants make proposals freely so as to deepen the cooperation with the civic tech community. For this year's Exchange Session of Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea Civil Servants, 51 government officials were invited to play the role of "issue posers," sharing the challenges encountered in policy promotion and public services. The actual needs of government departments were matchmade to the abundant public innovation, heralding a new chapter in public governance cooperation.
In her speech, Isabel Hou, Deputy Minister of MODA, pointed out that Facing the Ocean brings together talents from different backgrounds and departments. The communication process is helpful in comprehending the core of problems, building consensus and finding solutions. She stressed that governments should take lead and provide guidance in tackling challenges, driving cooperation with civic tech participants with an inclusive and courageous attitude.
During the main Hackathon event, participants, with the assistance of real-time multilingual translation, engaged in intensive collaboration on diverse topics such as open source, public code development, artificial intelligence literacy, disaster prevention information services, and marine information disclosure. Many teams came up with creative prototypes in just two days, rolling out solutions that not only were innovative and practical, but also will lay the foundation for future promotion and application.
MODA proclaimed its continuous support for such civic tech activities in the future in hopes for promoting multinational cooperation and exchanges between governments and communities, and jointly building a more open, innovative and resilient digital society.
