San Francisco mayor wants law requiring departments to put city data online

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is announcing legislation to make permanent an executive order to require city data to be published online. -db

San Francisco Chronicle
September 13, 2010
By  John Coté

Parents looking for the nearest playground, diners seeking the cleanest restaurants and Muni riders waiting for the next bus won’t be the only ones benefiting from San Francisco’s efforts to make city data available to the public.

At least that’s Mayor Gavin Newsom’s expectation as he plans to announce legislation today to make permanent an innovative executive order he issued last year directing city department heads to publish online all data that meets privacy and security guidelines.

The idea is to make already-public information easily available. Academics, open-government advocates or software developers can do with it what they wish, like watchdogging government spending or designing applications for mobile devices like the iPhone.

In the 11 months the policy has been in place, there’s been more than 50 applications designed using city data, like CrimeMapping.com, Routesy for real-time transit information and Mom Maps, which finds kid-friendly locales.

“It’s important information,” said Jay Nath, manager of innovation at the Department of Technology. “It’s about quality of life.”

Newsom – running for lieutenant governor and termed out at the end of 2011 – now wants to enshrine that effort in city law.

The mayor’s administration contends the practice makes government more transparent, drives innovation and ultimately saves taxpayers money.

Public Works Director Ed Reiskin, for example, was exploring using about $30,000 in city funds to create an application to alert people to move their cars for street-sweeping, department spokeswoman Christine Falvey said.

Before finding money in the city budget, independent software developers created two applications using the city’s online data clearinghouse that accomplished the task.

“There’s no reason that the government has to be the sole provider of these applications,” said Alan Wells, co-founder of Hakuwale, a media company that used city data to create an application to locate nearby recycling facilities. “There’s hundreds of capable software developers in this country, especially in the Bay Area.”

Falvey credits Hakuwale’s EcoFinder with helping to cut the $2 million the department spends annually hauling off items people dump on the street. “It helps us keep stuff off the sidewalks,” Falvey said.

Newsom’s office says the legislation will be a first for a city in this country and is being watched from Seattle to London.

Steve Hilton, strategy director for British Prime Minister David Cameron, a Conservative, lauded San Francisco’s practice in a bulletin last year, saying: “As well as promoting accountability and efficiency, transparency can lead to innovation.”

Criticism has been largely limited to those who note some departments haven’t been following the mayor’s directive, or that the city is failing to collect meaningful information.

There are only 167 sets of data posted so far on the city’s one-stop online shop, datasf.org.

Two departments, technology and public works, have posted at least two dozen sets each, while others, like the Department of Public Health, have posted only one. The Recreation and Park Department has posted none, according to city figures.

Board of Supervisors President David Chiu, who has made updating the city’s technology infrastructure a signature issue, said he was supportive of Newsom’s goal, but added: “We’ve only taken baby steps.”

“I think the biggest problem is a lot of departments aren’t collecting data,” Chiu said. “DataSF will only be successful if data is being collected – and the right data is being analyzed.”

Skeptics of Newsom’s efforts point to agencies failing to provide comprehensive figures on arrests, prosecutions and convictions for quality-of-life crimes during the debate over the ballot measure to ban sitting or lying down on city sidewalks. Others point to the use of on-time rates, rather than rides completed, as a misleading metric for Muni performance. Part of the problem, Chiu said, is outdated technology.

“It’s 2010,” Chiu said, “but we’re still only working with 20th century technologies.”

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One Comment

  • IS THIS A JOKE? I am a licensed California attorney who, in preparation for a book I am writing about the legislative history of the San Francisco Park Code, has spent the last fifteen months investigating the ongoing and seemingly willful open government violations by members of the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department, the San Francisco Recreation & Park Commission, the Clerk’s office of the Board of Supervisors, the Board of Supervisors and the Mayor’s Office including but not limited to Section 66016 of the Government Code, Sections 2.105. 2.109, 4.102, 4.104, 16.112 and 18.107 of the City Charter, Section 54954.2(a)(1) of the Ralph M. Brown Act, numerous sections of the San Francisco Sunshine Ordinance including 67.7(a)(b)(c), 67.7-1(c), 67.16, 67.24(a)(2), 67.25, 67.29-2, 67.29-7(c) and 67.34, Sections 3.7, 3.8 and 10.100-305(a)(b)(c) of the Administrative Code, Section 79.5 of the Citizen’s Right to Know Act of 1998 and Section 11105.3 of the California Penal Code.

    If anyone from the First Amendment Coalition reads this, if you could please get in touch with me, I would appreciate it.

    These violations include the failure to post a single agenda for any regular or special meeting of the Board of Supervisors, the Recreation & Park Commission or any committees thereof in an area that is freely accessible to the public even after supplying the Clerk’s Office with a copy of Attorney General Opinion 95-112, the imposition of literally hundreds of fees that have never been approved by resolution or ordinance and the leasing away and closures of dozens of public facilities without the requisite duly noticed public hearings!

    For a recent specific example, I submitted a public information request last week to the Mayor’s Office requesting the source for the Mayor’s authority to initiate fee legislation back in June ’09 that was clearly within the jurisdiction of the San Francisco Recreation and Park Commission and Department . The request was completely ignored until I threatened to file a sworn complaint with the City Attorney’s Office, the District Attorney’s Office and the state Attorney General.

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