Keynoting the event lunch on day two of the conference was San Francisco's Deputy Chief Innovation Officer Shannon Spanhake, who works alongside Jay Nath in Mayor Ed Lee's Civic Innovation Office. Spanhake offered some tips based on San Francisco's path to its current position as, according to Spanhake, the most innovative city in the world.
There's more to it than technology
Champion new ideas and new approaches – not just new tools. The Civic Innovation Office certainly promotes the use of new technologies, but that’s not its only mission. Ultimately the goal is to surface ideas that make San Francisco city government more accountable, accessible and responsive.“Innovation isn’t just about tech,” Spanhake said. “It’s about finding new ways to solve old problems.
Throw out the master plan
You can’t “master plan” innovation. Instead, Spanhake recommends an agile and iterative approach to launching innovative initiatives. Don’t expect to figure everything out on the first try, she said. “Invest a little bit, see what happens and correct.”Turn your data into jobs
San Francisco is creating new companies and new employment through an aggressive open data campaign. The city has opened more than 500 government data sets, which have spawned more than 100 apps, along with new businesses built around them.“We’re creating jobs in San Francisco just by opening up data that used to be sitting in file cabinets,” Spanhake said. “If pink is the new black, then data is the new gold.”
Rethink your hackathon
Early San Francisco hackathons often produced a lot of "solutions looking for problems," Spanhake told the crowd, where well-meaning developers produced cool apps with limited applications for everyday citizens.The city has since evolved its hackathon strategy, and is getting better results. Start your event by having government stakeholders frame the civic problem, in all its complexity. This approach, deployed at a "unhackathon" event focused on transportation, gave San Francisco some apps it could use.
