As dramatic images of the Texas floods pour in, it’s timely to ask: would a tech mindset help cities be more responsive and efficient in their disaster response? The concept of transforming the culture of a city hall by adopting a tech approach is what I’ve been exploring this month for the BBC World Service. How would an agile, innovative tech mindset help to fix problems and meet community needs more quickly? My report aired this week on Business Matters and fellow guest Duncan Clark, Chairman of BDA, shared his perspective from Beijing.

Alison van Diggelen reports from Silicon Valley, on how a tech mindset is helping transform San Jose’s City Hall.

“I’ve been really encouraged with how willing people are to try new things. We’re seeing a culture shift here at city hall, that is interested in learning about technology and process improvement and customer driven innovation,” Erica Garaffo, Data Analytics Lead at San Jose City Hall

Listen to the BBC podcast (starts @16:30) or to podcast segment below

http://www.freshdialogues.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/SV-Tech-Mindset-segment-on-BBC-BusinessMatters-Aug-28-2017.mp3

Here’s a transcript of the segment, edited for length and clarity:

The BBC’s Fergus Nicoll: We’ve been talking about urban management and weather. Time now to talk about simple urban management in the context of cities that aren’t content to wait for federal infrastructure investment. Alison’s been investigating this in San Jose, in the heart of Silicon Valley…

Alison van Diggelen: Some city managers are not holding their breath with the current administration in D.C. The Trump administration is behind on all major promises (infrastructure investment, tax reform etc.); so, here in San Jose, they’re adopting a tech approach to make City Hall more efficient, accessible and responsive to community needs like flooding. San Jose is leveraging its location in the heart of Silicon Valley to lead the charge. I’ve been exploring their game plan and I started by visiting Diridon Station, the main transport hub in San Jose’s city center, to find out from the locals what they think of the city.

[Atmos: Train, plane, bus traffic in downtown San Jose]

Glen Abbott: What public works you see being done are extensive street modifications and drainage that go on and on and on and never seem to reach completion! Somebody is buttering somebody else’s toast…

Chelsea Conrad: There’s a lot of graffiti and trash I’ve noticed…I think it should be cleaned up…It’s kind of an eyesore…

Alison van Diggelen: Meet Kip Harkness. He’s deputy city manager of San Jose, the self described “Capital of Silicon Valley.” Harkness dresses a la Steve Jobs in black turtleneck and blue jeans. A former Director at PayPal; today he wants to bring innovation and the “speed of business” to civic life in San Jose. With the enthusiasm of a tech evangelist, he demos the city’s latest release on his smartphone: It’s an app called “My San Jose”

Kip Harkness: Here we are at City Hall – you can see the pinpoints that are requests…you can see illegal dumping. Lots of illegal dumping!

Alison van Diggelen: Does it scare you to see so many complaints?

Kip Harkness: It’s excites me. Now we know what the issues are. About 10,000 people have already downloaded the app…

Alison van Diggelen: He’s assembling what he calls “a tribe of innovators” to transform City Hall.

Kip Harkness: So we found some graffiti…it asks me if I want to take a picture. It confirms the location. Done, submitted, reference request is in there. Hopefully over the course of the day it will be processed in the system and that status will be updated.

[Atmos: scrum meeting discussion with Michelle Thong…laughter…]

Alison van Diggelen: I meet his “tribe” on the 17th floor of City Hall just before their daily “scrum” – a 15 minute standup meeting. Participants move sticky notes across a [...]