See you soon

By Jessica Singleton, Chief Digital Officer, City of NY

TL;DR: So grateful to Mayor de Blasio, Deputy Mayor Glen, and all colleagues in and out of government. We’ve accomplished a lot and NYCTech is bigger than ever. Come eat pizza and drink with me on Thursday and say bye (for now). Stay in touch: jessie.singleton at gmail.

After two and a half years in New York City Hall, I’m heading to Boston in the fall to get an MBA at Harvard Business School. I’m grateful to the Mayor for giving me the opportunity to serve our city in this role, and for offering good advice over the last year as I made the decision to apply.

That decision took a long time (I considered just posting the pro-con list here). To say thank you to the folks in and out of government who are responsible for everything we’ve accomplished, I’m sharing some of those thoughts.

There is no better place to be in tech right now than in New York City.

Our tech ecosystem is one of the fastest growing in the world, and becoming one of the largest outright based on key metrics like jobs, wages, and funding rounds and requests. And we are diverse — but self-aware enough to recognize that we are not nearly diverse or inclusive enough. The community is acting on a real commitment to do something about that. This summer, as Black Girls Code moved into Google’s Chelsea campus and New York was named the best city in the world for women entrepreneurs, I was again encouraged by our prospects of building a tech industry in New York that looks like New York.

We’re lucky to have a generation of tech leaders who paved the way and brought others along, too. Our own DoubleClick mafia built dozens of companies, created thousands of jobs, and helped transform NYC’s economy into the global tech hub it is today. Their and others’ leadership organized a nascent NYC tech community and created space for it to mature. From new physical hubs like Civic Hall and the New Lab, to advocacy and membership organizations like Tech:NYC and New York Tech Alliance, the proof is in the number of people and companies joining to be a part of something bigger.

And so, just like pizza and bagels, New York Style Tech (h/t Anil) has taken on a life of its own, and is here to stay.

In City Hall, we’ve been focused on taking New York City’s inherent strengths — diversity, density, industry expertise, culture, and the list goes on — and doubling down on them to make New York the #1 place for innovative people and companies.

I remember working with Mayor de Blasio on his first “tech speech” at Internet Week 2014. We honed a new three-part framework to support the tech ecosystem’s growth: human capital and talent, access and infrastructure, and government’s own innovation. That framework has guided us as the organizing principle for our work and the way we measure our progress.

On talent:

• Computer Science for All 1.1 million students in New York City public schools is becoming a reality, thanks to a tremendous lift from partners across government and generous private sector donors.
• In two years, the Tech Talent Pipeline has more than tripled in size, having just expanded by another 1,700 New Yorkers, preparing them for good paying jobs at Made in NY tech companies.
• 12 CUNY and other NY universities are aligning what they teach in the classroom to what tech companies are hiring for today.
• In the absence of actual immigration reform in Washington, we found a way to help international entrepreneurs relocate or expand to NYC by helping them qualify for cap-exempt H-1B visas. Applications are coming in from all over the globe for the International Innovators Initiative (IN2NYC).

On access and infrastructure:

We’re delivering universal, affordable high-speed internet access for the City’s residents and businesses and upgrading New York City’s infrastructure to support our growing economy. From transforming a relic of our streetscape into gigabit-speed wireless communication portals with LinkNYC to unlocking waterfront neighborhoods from Sunset Park in Brooklyn to Astoria in Queens with the BQX, we’re investing in the resources to connect New Yorkers to what matters in a 21st century economy: good jobs, each other, and the Internet.

• Google New York is expanding even further west, growing from an office to an urban campus as they break ground at Pier 57 in Hudson River Park.
• Brooklyn Navy Yard is creating a new home for modern manufacturing and innovation, as Building 77 signs a lease with 1776, New Lab opens its doors in the Green Manufacturing Center, and WeWork breaks ground to add 675,000 square feet of space to the innovation economy.
• Completing a fiber backbone down 3rd Ave in Sunset Park, bringing a broadband expansion to City’s industrial hubs, and taking a fresh look at our franchise agreements and holding those providers accountable to deliver affordable, high speed connections for New Yorkers.
• 750 Links with the fastest municipal wifi in the world will be in ground by the time I’m taking an accounting exam in December.

On government innovation:

When we came into City Hall, we knew that the greatest challenge would be government itself. Procurement, legacy infrastructure, outdated rules and regulations, bureaucracy… the list goes on (it’s like Bingo Night at Cornell Tech!). Taking on these challenges and seeing what change is possible through public-private partnerships is what in many ways inspired my decision to go to business school.

• The Digital Playbook is a plan for City government to use digital technology to increase equity and help all New Yorkers participate in the political, civic, and cultural life of the city.
• A new public prototyping website, alpha.nyc.gov, is our experiment in designing digital services with New Yorkers. We’re using this site to test new designs, new tools, and new ways of working. Currently, alpha tests three of the most commonly searched services: paying a parking ticket, applying for an IDNYC, and finding a job. Feedback from New Yorkers via the form and user testing will inform what’s next — and ultimately, the future of nyc.gov.
• At no cost to tax payers, we teamed up with Gust and IBM to build a dynamic online home for the city’s tech ecosystem: digital.nyc.
• After a year of compiling best practices across multiple stakeholders, the City released a beta set of Guidelines for the Internet of Things, making New York the first city to have comprehensive guidelines of this kind.

Government is catching up on other fronts, too.

Many of our rules and regulations apply to pre-internet business models. As a result, an increasing share of our economy is hamstrung by outdated classifications and we don’t always have a good handle on the effects of these companies on longstanding public policy priorities.

To support the 21st century economy, and the products and people that power it, something about the way government regulates it has to change. The way we do that has to be dynamic and flexible given the pace of innovation in the marketplace. And it has to be effective and enforceable.

We want to be the city that gets this right.

So, we’re helping lead an international coalition of cities to draft a set of principles that clearly state what governments expect of platforms. These principles will help cities like New York develop guidelines to support smart and effective regulation and bolster all of our public policy goals, including a vibrant, inclusive, and competitive economy.

Of course, we want to — must — do this work collaboratively. The sticking point now and forever is that we need data to make smart decisions. Building data agreements with platforms or intermediaries will be the key to getting this right in the future.

About the future — it’s in good hands around here.

In the last 2.5 years since this administration began, we’ve built an army of smart, creative, and eager folks making all of the above possible, and more. The good news for the City is that Anne, Jeff, Kristen, Minerva, Amen, Ariel, Matt, Rebecca, Masha, Debbie, Kathleen, Ana, Darren and the list goes on will still be here; for me, truly nothing is more bittersweet than leaving them in this moment for tech and innovation in New York City.

Please stay in touch: jessie.singleton at gmail dot com.