Lessons from the journey of the San Francisco Digital Services Team
By: Matthias Jaime, guest contributor
Most good things in government start with a small group of individuals committed to a kernel of an idea. The evolution of the San Francisco Digital Services (SFDS) team is no different.
The Digital Service Network, a collaboration of the Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation and U.S. Digital Response (USDR), gathered some of the key characters in SFDS’s journey from inception to becoming the largest municipal government digital team in the U.S. From the origins of SFDS’s budgeting, and governance (Matthias Jaime); to launch and early leadership (Carrie Bishop); to continued leadership, institutionalization, and deepening impact within the City and County (Cyd Harrell); we gathered the highs and lows of launching a digital service team.
For governments still in the early stages of their digital transformation story: you’re not alone.
Hear directly from a jurisdiction a bit further in their journey, and learn their lessons and insights on how to overcome key challenges. Check out the panel discussion here:
Some of the key insights from these three San Francisco leaders gleaned from the session:
- A core multidisciplinary team of “doers” is critical for success. Before a SFDS team existed, there was a small group of public servants with the shared vision of introducing a new way of delivering services to San Francisco residents. While this concept was familiar in the private sector, terms like “user-centered design” were not standard within the walls of government. San Francisco’s core team of doers was composed of people from the Committee on Information Technology, DataSF, the Mayor’s Office of Civic Innovation, the Department of Technology, 311, and the Mayor’s Budget Office. The team met regularly in 2014 and 2015 to conduct the discovery research that ultimately became a shared vision for digital transformation. Ultimately, they developed a strategy that reflected the unique flavor of how San Francisco would build out its digital service function.
- Be sure to get top-down AND bottom-up internal buy-in. Every government has its unique organizational identity composed of governance, culture, and the extent to which it is centralized in its shared services and authorities. To be successful in highly federated government structures, networks and relationships often matter much more than explicit authority. In San Francisco, the core team ensured they had both top-down (executive sponsorship) and bottom-up (department support) buy-in for their efforts. In this case, the City Administrator was the formal executive sponsor and the Mayor’s Office participated and informed the strategy development along the way. The team also did extensive outreach and stakeholder engagement with various department leaders in communications, policy, technology, and data. Matthias, former Director for the Committee on Information Technology at the City and County of San Francisco, shared how the team held two participatory workshops (see page 49 of strategy) with department staff to narrow down key insights that provided an evidence-based purpose for future recommendations. This work helped to relate the strategy research to colleagues who had not been “in the room” with them in developing the strategy and ultimately to build the buy-in and networks necessary to overcome roadblocks and secure budget and resources.
- Build a strategic partnership with the IT department. In San Francisco, the Digital Services team and Department of Technology are separate teams that report to the City Administrator. Often, there seems to be an inherent tension and competitiveness between new digital teams and the existing IT landscape in the government. In the early days, the SFDS team experienced some of these dynamics but with time, the team found ways to collaborate productively with the Department of Technology. Ultimately, the teams worked together to define distinct areas of authority to establish swim lanes, which helped to focus each team. For example, the team clarified that the IT department should lead on networks, communications, cybersecurity, and enterprise tools, which created space for the Digital Services team to lead on resident-facing services and customer experience. In addition to defining distinct areas of work, they have identified strategic areas of collaboration. Panelists highlighted several key areas of partnership between SFDS and the Department of Technology, including shared interests in cybersecurity, transitioning departments to a .gov domain, and support on issuing large technology procurements. Navigating these “tricky waters” requires diplomacy, humility, and time.
- Build momentum, resources, and visibility by supporting executive priorities. For better or for worse, funding is often project-based in many governments. As Carrie shared, “this means if you want to grow the team, you can grow it by doing projects and asking for positions to deliver on those projects.” For example, the City was constructing a new Permit Center — a physical building where people could come for all of their permitting needs — and leaders of that initiative called in SFDS to help. SFDS played a critical role in pushing the project team to consider the customer experience of the Permit Center and helped the team imagine how to bring as much as possible online to help people avoid having to show up in person. This and many other opportunistic choices, such as building the online home for the newly created Office of Cannabis, developing critical vaccine sites, and clear content during the pandemic, helped the team model what good could look like and helped to build credibility and visibility on high-priority city initiatives.
While the San Francisco journey experienced a lot of complexity, it’s clear that the team has made an immense impact on how San Francisco puts residents at the center of its services and that the best is yet to come as it scales policy and practice.
“Policy and practice come together in platforms. If we make it easy and desirable to be on these platforms that express the right things from the policy, that is how we win long-term” Cyd Harrell, Chief Digital Services Officer, City and County of San Francisco
To learn more:
- Team Website: Digital Services | San Francisco
- San Francisco Digital Services Strategy (published 2016)
- Digital Accessibility and Inclusion Standard | San Francisco
- Blog: San Francisco Digital Services — Medium
Video of the one-hour session with the panel, which informed this blog post, can be found on the Digital Service Network’s YouTube channel.
About the author: Matthias Jaime is the Deputy Secretary of Technology & Innovation / Agency Information Officer at the California Government Operations Agency.
Are you delivering digital services in government? We’re here to help.
The Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation and U.S. Digital Response (USDR) offer no-cost resources, templates, playbooks, consulting, and more to help your government join in this exciting work to make government work better for the people it serves.
A good place to start is by joining our Digital Service Network here.
