Following San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee’s presentation of the city’s new government tech innovation plans last night at the TechFellow Awards, I caught up with him briefly to get a few more details. I asked questions like what his true feelings were towards the awful local taxi companies (negative) and how he’s going to take on the more recalcitrant portions of the city bureaucracy (he’s in a fighting mood). Check out the video for the full answers.
A couple other notes. After my article last night, City-based open government advocate and blogger Luke Fretwell directed me to a recent post of his about many of the issues that the city has had trying to make itself more tech-friendly. Among other examples, it has moved away from using open standards towards proprietary technologies, and it has failed to provide data to developers that it should have if it were truly serious. Separately, regarding a new open data plan included in Lee’s presentation, O’Reilly Gov 2.0 blogger Alex Howard believes that the effort could manifest itself in an implementation of Socrata, a government-oriented database startup.
TechCrunch hasn’t normally covered the ins and outs of open government initiatives in detail, but I personally find the topic fascinating so let me know if you’re working in the space and have news to share — eldon at techcrunch dot com.