At Vator Splash Spring on May 12, we will be honored to have Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf come join us a keynote speaker. (She also joined us last year to discuss diversity on a panel called “When will tech look like America?” You can watch it here).
She hasn’t been Mayor for very long, having only been inaugurated in January of 2015, but in just the last year and a half she has put in place a number of initatives to help foster Oakland’s emerging tech scene.
“Mayor Schaaf’s vision for Oakland is a city where everyone is safe, healthy and prosperous, and Oakland’s children have the skills and hope to fulfill their dreams. Ensuring that Oakland’s economic prosperity is shared is a key part of achieving this vision,” Erica Derryck, Director of Communications for the Mayor’s Office, told me.
“Under Mayor Schaaf’s leadership, Oakland will continue to promote a diverse local economy of which technology is a growing and thriving part of the mix. #Tequity is the centerpiece of Mayor Schaaf’s efforts to ensure that Oakland’s growing tech ecosystem is focused on solving real world problems and equitably benefits Oaklanders.”
Here are six of those initatives that Mayor Schaaf has put in place during her time in office.
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Digital Front Door
Digital Front Door is partnered with Code for America to redesign the City’s website, which is designed to help the city understand their residents’ online user needs, create a beta site, and navigate procurement issues to hire a local web development team.
The work is grounded in creating a user-focused web presence that meets the needs of Oakland community. The project will streamline information, simplify web content and enhance digital service delivery.
Phase 1 of the project ended in late 2014, with Phase 2 kicking off in early 2015.
“Phase 2 is about actually redeveloping the City of Oakland’s website and the internal processes associated with digital service delivery,” Code for America wrote.
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Civic Design Lab
The Civic Design Lab (CDL), which launched in December, brings together experts in government and the local community to facilitate discussion, co-create communities of practice and share their expertise with government staff.
It breaks down siloed City government by bringing together individuals and teams from multiple departments to engage in the following activities:
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Public Feedback Sessions (i.e. user testing). We want to invite the public into the space to give the City feedback about tools, processes and communication.
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Project Based Fellowship. The space will host City employees to engage in project based work in civic tech, design thinking and discuss ethical decision making; framing the right questions and collaborative solution making.
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Workshops or “Labs” for civil servants. Labs are designed to enable City staff to better build and implement digital services focused on user research, web analytics and content development.
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Engagement Events. The space will host small public events to open the space, foster engagement and train residents on how to access government services using online tools.
The goal is to improve civic engagement through infusing bureaucracy with human centered design, user testing, analytics and clear communication.
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Oakland Police Data Initiative
Oakland is among 26 law enforcement agencies, along with Philadelphia, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Dallas and Camden, which were selected by the White House in May of last year to open key data on police interactions within the community.
It means that Oakland Police is working to offer increased transparency around complaints, use of force including officer-involved shootings, sworn demographics, crowd management, and other data of public interest.
Through the initiative, The Oakland Police Department partnered with researchers from Stanford University to “build automated tools to better analyze the audio of encounters between police and citizens,” both those that were particularly good, or particularly bad.
“This will allow the Oakland PD to quickly identify problems and also to lift up real world examples of the great police work that happens every day,” the White House wrote.
In addition, it also involved researching ways that body worn camera data could be used to make training more effective.
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Online Business Portal
Oakland is one of 27 cities participating in the “Startup in a Day” prize challenge, which was announced by the White House in August of last year.
Other participating cities include Anchorage, Boston, Milwaukee, Memphis, Seattle, St. Louis and Washington D.C. Two Native American community were also chosen: Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation and Choctaw Nation.
The goal is to streamline city services and regulations for businesses such that most entrepreneurs can get all the permits and certificates they need to open a business within one day. Each city was given $50,000 each in order to :help these communities streamline the licensing, permitting, and other requirements needed to start a business in their areas, with the goal of enabling entrepreneurs to initiate all necessary steps within one business day,” the White House wrote.
The site is in beta testing and will launch later this year.
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Startup in Residence
As part of a regional program with Cities of San Francisco, San Leandro and West Sacramento, Oakland launched its Startup in Residence program this Spring with two startups doing pro bono four-month long residencies with OPD and the Department of Human Services.
The first is Bayes Impact, which is working with the Oakland Police Department to create an analytics solution to assess highly demanded information and services from the police department.
The other is Preschool2me, which is working with the Oakland Human Services Department to create software to support Head Start outreach, enrollment and administration.
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Kiva Oakland
The Kiva Zip platform connects citizens to resources, like access to zero percent capital for local entrepreneurs.
Kiva Oakland is a way to crowdfund local economic development by utilizing an Internet microfinance platform to connect citizens and their neighbors to local entrepreneurs and provide them with affordable capital to start and grow their business.
Thus far, 40 Oakland businesses have used the platform to crowdsource 0% interest loans. Kiva Oakland highlights different ways cities can engage civic tech platforms to increase their reach in an era of limited resources.
(Image source: sfgate.com)
