Growing Digital Services in San Francisco
A year and a half ago a team of passionate and determined city workers created the Digital Services Strategy for San Francisco. They wanted to make it easier for San Franciscans to do what they need to do, like set up a business or find affordable housing. At the start of this year I moved here from London to be the City’s Chief Digital Services Officer to make this strategy a reality.
I’ve wanted to live in San Francisco since I was a kid. Being here is every bit as awesome as I’d imagined. Every day I appreciate how lucky I am to live and work in this city. I’m humbled and excited to be part of its next steps.
Before I took this amazing opportunity I was working in the UK and around the world to help city governments improve their digital services. I started my career in local government and am passionate about designing services around the people that use them — the residents, businesses and visitors who are the lifeblood of cities.
I’ve spent the last few months listening to and learning about the challenges the City faces, how change happens here, and of course all the good stuff that’s already underway. There are some immediate and obvious things we need to fix, and there are some longer term projects that need careful thought and wide engagement. The Digital Services Team is working on both.
In the short term, we know the website needs work. It needs to work better for the people of San Francisco. We’ll be talking with people who use the website, and directly involving those users in improving our web content. We also need to remain focused on the longer term goal of building digital services around the people that use them.
We already have examples of excellent digital services. The Find Affordable Housing service launched last year to let San Francisco residents find, apply for and re-apply for affordable housing. The service puts all the City’s listings in one place, saving residents time. About 85% of all affordable rental applications now come through the service.
But it took hard work and collaboration to build. Collaboration between San Francisco Digital Services, the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development, the Mayor’s Office of Civic Innovation, the Department of Technology, our vendors, Google’s Civic Bridge pro-bono team and residents who need affordable housing.
We’ll continue to collaborate, both across San Francisco and more broadly. We’ll use this blog to talk about our work, approaches, and give credit when we’re borrowing shamelessly from those who’ve gone before us. We’ll also post job openings as we look to expand the team.
We’d love your feedback and comments on what we’re doing. Follow our publication SF Digital Service and find me on Twitter @carriebish if you’d like to chat.
