>> it is like the former director gathering. [laughter] having spent four years doing right of way infrastructure work in san francisco, it is not sexy, it is critically important to the economy and quality of life for those of us in san francisco. this bond will make it easier and safer for people to get around san francisco on foot by improving sidewalks, intersections, better striping, countdown signals it will make it easier and safer for people to get around on bicycles by improving and adding more bicycle lanes, making them safer, separating them from traffic wherever we can. it will make it easier and more efficient to get around on

transit because we will be improving our traffic signal controllers so the traffic signals talk to the others so that the buses move faster. this will be helping -- happening on the smoother pavement that these dollars will bring to san francisco. it is an important investment in infrastructure. you put those things together making it easier and more attractive to walk, bike, and take transit. that is how we meet the goals set back in 1973. it is only with this kind of investment that we can become the transit first city we all want to be. i want to thank the leadership standing behind me, particularly a supervisor wiener, without whom the spawned would not have passed. i want to thank some people who worked hard behind-the-scenes to do the legwork, analytical work,

the packaging of this. i want to acknowledge douglas legg, gloria chan, and others from dpw. we stand ready to work with dpw, stakeholders, and the public. we're ready to go to work to invest for san francisco and create jobs. thank you very much. [applause] >> power agency also works very closely with the san francisco -- in our agency also worked very closely with others to address pot holes and provide smooth rides for bicyclists. we depend on the bicycle coalition and its members to give us information, assessments, and conditions of the streets. i would like to introduce the executive director to say a few words.

[applause] >> you know we will tell you what we think. we will keep on that. i want to thank the political leadership behind me and the amazing leadership of the family around me. we're so proud to be part of the bond passing. i bike regularly on 17th street. this is a very welcome news of the bond funds to repay the 17th street. it is a great example of how far our money can go. these planes were strike less than a year ago. we have seen noticeable increases in the number of people biking on the street. this has happened throughout the city. every time we have dedicated space to biking, we see increases in the number of people biking. we will see the same kind of improvements and changes in safety when our roads are paved and smooth. it could not matter more to

someone on a bicycle. the numbers of people boking in san francisco -- the numbers of people biking in san francisco are skyrocketing. that is good for our environment, public health, and quality of life. it is also good for our local economy. more people biking and walking means more people visiting our commercial corridors, shopping, eating, in the local economy. that is for all the neighborhoods in our city. there is a great new study by -- i have to get the name right and give them credit. the political economy research institute in baltimore. the new study shows infrastructure projects around biking and pedestrian projects create more jobs than traditional road projects. on average, the projects create

11 to 14 jobs per $1 million spent. traditional road infrastructure projects create on average seven jobs per $1 million spent. we are really proud of that. we want to make sure we're pumping more money into our local economy with more jobs, more people biking, and frequenting our commercial corridors. we look forward to repaving 17th street and many more. [applause] >> one more important partner. we've touched on improvement for drivers, transit riders, and bicyclist. this bond will also repair sidewalks all over the city. what san francisco is premier pedestrian advocacy organization. i would like to introduce the executive director.

[applause] >> walk s.f. is eager to see new investment in wider sidewalks and smarter street design throughout the city. in san francisco, even though we all walk, we still see 800 people here get hit by cars. that is too much. thanks to the mayor's pedestrian safety task force, we know that only 7% of our streets are where over half of all of the serious and fatal injuries occur. that means we know where to focus our resources to save lives. smart investment will pay off for everyone in the city because more walkable streets means more foot traffic. that is better for local businesses. that means safer streets for

kids to walk to schools, families to walk to parks, and for everyone to enjoy lives, works, and visits san francisco. thank you. [applause] >> i will now turn it over to mayor lee. i will ask all of us to gather around as he signs the legislation at his ne >> today is 2/3. one there.

i only have one of these pens. if i had more, everybody behind me would get one. they're valuable things. otherwise, the tallest person. [laughter] [applause] >> thank you very much. >> let's get to work.

>> we believe we can bring innovation to government, entrepreneurs, developers, with the government to make a difference. i would like to introduce mayor ed lee of san francisco to kick us off. >> thank you, good morning. happy new year i want to start out by saying the new year brings us -- while we still hear

bad news from the federal and state economy, i have always believed, particularly this last year as interim mayor, working with people like ron conaway, jenn, certainly talking with david chiu, we need to innovate our way out of a lot of these problems. you are going to hear me use that word innovation quite a bit. i think, for our city, innovating ourselves into more transparency to be more customer friendly and transparent, to be more efficient as a government, bringing more services, and meeting the economic challenges that i think are continuing to plague us, is going to be the way we succeed. today, i have two basic

announcements. the first is we are forming a strategic partnership. code for america is a nonprofit that has been presenting innovative ideas to city governments, and particularly, for san francisco. i want to expose them to everything we have in terms of direct customer services, challenges we have had for many years, and to ask them to work with the strategically to create, in a competitive nature and a strategic partnership, a relationship where we can have companies and individuals and the entrepreneurs come through code of america and get the kind of information for the challenges we are having in government, and to work with us to create the most innovative ideas possible. some of you may ask, what are we really talking about? for example, last january -- the

best example i can give you is, i was intrigued by this application we have created in the mta, where we had a sf park. an innovative idea of creating parking applications to solve some of our congestion on the street. i brought that application to the conference of mayors in washington, d.c. and was immediately surrounded by no less than five additional measures that said, that is something happening in san francisco. we can use that idea here. it is that kind of example where we have more ideas to share, where we can create more applications than create ideas, through the code of america, working with our technology entrepreneur is, working with city departments, with the leadership of our mayor's

office, board of supervisors, to challenge us to come up with more ideas as to how we could solve some problems that plague us, whether at the unique, in homeless areas, or whether it might be trying to catch a taxi cab in a more efficient way. we think we could have a more to do to a partnership with a code of america. we are announcing today -- by the way, code of america will be moving into larger offices at ninth and mission in the next few months, and be right with us, both physically, and this innovative strategic partnership that i want to announce today, to really bring in code of america in a strategic way. the second announcement i want to make is, i cannot do this myself. in fact, i am still trying to figure out how to do better with

tweeting the things i want to get done. the conversation that i have had with ron conaway and companies that have registered a tremendous interest, working with john walton and are part of technology. we think it is absolutely necessary to register our interests in innovation by declaring the chief innovation officer for the city. perhaps the first in america, certainly in san francisco. i have tapped the talent jane to my right, who has been working in the department of technology. he has been the leader in open data government efforts in our city. i would like him to now come into the mayor's office and be the point person for us to declare that we want that innovation in the heart of the

mayor's office and helping the departments figure out how they can use innovation and how they can be connected with nonprofits like code for america, to get not only their data, but even their business practices more efficient and transparent. he is our chief innovation officer for the city. he will be working alongside me in making sure the mayor's office, working with the board of supervisors, has at its helm, with the proper authority, a corporate visibility, leadership in making sure innovation is a part of everything we do, both in leading the departments and our efforts to innovate ourselves out of the many challenges forthcoming. i think we need an innovation that the mayor's office, so we have asked him to come forward

to do this. i needed to be very visible to everybody. i need it also to signal that this is our dedication -- that we have talked about for a few months. innovation will be a key component, key way in which we conduct ourselves in the city. by the way, it is not just innovation for innovation's sake. at the heart of this is job creation. i have said this over and over again to the point where people may be bored with it. at the heart of my 17-point plan of job creation and economic growth is technology growth. that has been the exciting part of my few months as interim mayor, and the last few months, to see that technology growth that is at the heart to bringing down the unemployment statistics in a dramatic way. these two announcements today,

the strategic partnership with code of america, as well as the identifying the chief innovative officer for the mayor's office, leading the way. i know that david chiu understands this and embraces this. he has been a champion for the government 2.0, if you will, in the city. even in our -- my brief race for mayorship, that we even talked about this maneuver competing, that we wanted to make sure this was something that we tried to do and entered into government. it is exciting for me, something that represents what i want to do for the next several your years as mayor of the city. i know that david chiu embraces this as well. he will be working with us extremely closely. with that, let me invite board president david chiu. >> thank you, mr. mayor.

i am pleased to be part of not just this presentation and announcements, but the team of political and technological innovators is a wonderful step for the city. before i came to city hall, i ran a technology company. like everyone here, we know we have some of the brightest and most innovative individuals, here in san francisco. that being said, when i came into city hall, i was shocked at the fact we are a city with a proximity to silicon valley, yet, while we spend $200 million a year in i.t., we have had seven disparate e-mail systems, three dozen data centers, and winnie the consolidation in technology, but even more importantly, we were not part is in the best and brightest minds here in san francisco. over the past year, i have attended a number of hack-a- thons, and was impressed about

the ideas of how to fix muni, making our commercial buildings greener, using vacant spaces, figuring out how to catch cabs. in the last couple of months, i figured out how we can legislate this as part of san francisco. mayor lee had a better idea, which was to partner with code of america to utilize the non- profit and private sector to come together with entrepreneurial minds. i want to figure from conaway for your leadership, not only helping to cede some of the greatest part we have here in the city, and working with a community that wants to work with the government. we have talked about in gauging the technology community and innovators to make city government better. i also want to take a moment to graduate the mayor for making a great decision for creating this position. a couple of weeks ago, i was reading york city was contemplating a similar

position like this, and i meant to come and tell you, you should create the position. lo and behold, here we are. he has really been driving innovation in the city, and it is important for there to be a central coordinating role. we have been working together to move the agenda forward. i do hope this will help to revitalize and change a culture of government and move us squarely into the 21st century. we are often stuck in some of our practices of 1999, and we need to be to where we are today, in the year 2012. with that, thank you very much for being here. >> thank you. it is really wonderful to hear the sentiments expressed about the need for technology to catch

up in city government. that is where we have been for a couple of years with code of america. we believe in the power of the entrepreneur to change the world. we look at how different the world was 15 years ago. so many of those changes have come through this amazing consumer internet that is now available to all of us. it makes our lives dramatically different, and it had disrupted so many sectors that touch our lives, whether you are talking about media, services. but there is one sector that has not changed enough, and that is the government. government technology broccoli is a $140 billion business. beyond that, government services, far larger than that. what we need to do is bring those amazing of entrepreneurs, so many of whom have come from here in san francisco -- we have the best of entrepreneurial country -- spirit in the country, to get them thinking not only about the challenges of

the consumer internet, but the citizen internet as well. at code for america -- you might be wondering what we do. we are a peace corps for dekes. through our fellowship program, we have been getting great developers and designers to take a year off and work with city government. what comes from that are great apps that citizens can use, but more than that, they work with the government on more innovative approaches to try to institutionalize these different approaches that reflect what we have come to call web 2.0. what we're talking about today is an amazing program funded by google, the kauffman foundation, help from her on, and others, and received an accelerator for civic start-ups. by that, we mean companies that work in the government space that will disrupt, in a healthy

way, the government ecosystem, and provide a new set of vendors and provide new and innovative ways for citizens to access government services. we are very excited to be partnering with san francisco on this. i am grateful for everyone here in the room, especially mayor lee, ron conaway, a andjay, who we have seen -- and jay, who we have seen as an innovative leader in this area. we are also blessed with the cedar accelerated to have so many other similar programs in the bay area that we can learn from. we will be following in the footsteps of organizations like -- learning what they do. code of america has a specific purpose, on specific start-ups, bring those wonderful on the

printer is in error to think about businesses that do not just change the consumer experience, but change the citizen experience. lastly, we are really blessed that so many of the angel investors an early stage vc's in the market are seeing this as an important place where they want to invest. that is why we have run conaway in the room, tim o'reilly, and many others that realize not only is it important for our country to encourage civic start-ups in order to bring our garment along, but it is also going to be a great business opportunity, place to invest their money. we are excited to have this accelerator and are proud to be part ring with san francisco to bring it to life, to have them teach ideas to launch the doors and have a healthy dialogue around the civic space. with that, i am turning it over to ron.

thank you for your support. >> hello, i am ron conaway. i am not sure jennifer was introduced prior. jennifer is the co-founder of code for america with tim o'reilly. the founder. jennifer is our hostess today and we are very thankful. i was born in san francisco, moved to the peninsula, raised my family there, moved back to san francisco eight years ago. my day job, in addition to civic activities, i am an angel investors. since 1994, i have invested over 600 companies. it is very interesting to see -- and most of these companies are in the bay area. there are about 200 companies that are active today. of those 200 companies, most of which in the bay area, over 52%

of our portfolio in sv angel are in san francisco today. what is significant is, in 2005, 75% of our portfolio was in silicon valley, i the south of san francisco. so there is definitely undisputed the migration of tech companies to san francisco, and we want to support that. some of the company that i am an investor in that will lead the charge in san francisco, twitter, ising guy, jawbone, eventbrite, trulia, and google. approval has a large office in san francisco. we think the tech community in san francisco needs to finally get active. ed