>> here we are at the embarcadero. we are standing at one of locations for the street artists. can you tell me about this particular location, the program? >> this location is very significant. this was the very first and only location granted by the board of supervisors for the street artist when the program began in 1972. how does a person become a

street artist? there are two major tenants. you must make the work yourself and you must sell the work yourself. a street artist, the license, then submitting the work to a committee of artists. this committee actually watches them make the work in front of them so that we can verify that it is all their own work. >> what happened during the holiday to make this an exciting location? >> this would be a magic time of year. you would probably see this place is jammed with street artists. as the no, there is a lottery held at 6 in the morning. that is how sought after the spaces are. you might get as many as 150 street artists to show up for 50 spaces. >> what other areas can a

licensed street artist go to? >> they can go to the fisherman's wharf area. they can go in and around union square. we have space is now up in the castro, in fact. >> how many are there? >> we have about 420. >> are they here all year round? >> out of the 420, i know 150 to sell all year round. i mean like five-seven days a week. >> are they making their living of of this? >> this is their sole source of income for many. >> how long have you been with this program. how much has it changed? >> i have been with the program since it began 37 and a half years ago but i have seen changes in the trend. fashion comes and goes. >> i think that you can still find plenty of titis perhaps.

>> this is because the 60's is retro for a lot of people. i have seen that come back, yes. >> people still think of this city as the birth of that movement. great, thank you for talking about the background of the program. i'm excited to go shopping. >> i would like you to meet two street artists. this is linda and jeremy. >> night said to me to print them -- nice to meet you. >> can you talk to me about a variety of products that use cell? >> we have these lovely constructed platters.

we make these wonderful powder bowls. they can have a lot of color. >> york also using your license. -- you are also using your license. >> this means that i can register with the city. this makes sure that our family participated in making all of these. >> this comes by licensed artists. the person selling it is the person that made it. there is nothing better than the people that made it. >> i would like you to meet michael johnson. he has been in the program for over 8 years. >> nice to me you.

what inspired your photography? >> i am inspired everything that i see. the greatest thing about being a photographer is being able to show other people what i see. i have mostly worked in cuba and work that i shot here in san francisco. >> what is it about being a street artist that you particularly like? >> i liked it to the first day that i did it. i like talking to mentum people. talking about art or anything that comes to our minds. there is more visibility than i would see in any store front. this would cost us relatively very little. >> i am so happy to meet you. i wish you all of the best. >> you are the wonderful artist

that makes these color coding. >> nice to me to. >> i have been a street artist since 1976. >> how did you decide to be a street artist? >> i was working on union square. on lunch hours, i would be there visiting the artist. it was interesting, exciting, and i have a creative streak in me. it ranges from t-shirts, jackets, hats. what is the day of the life of a street artist? >> they have their 2536 in the morning. by the end of the day, the last people to pack the vehicle probably get on their own at 7:30 at night. >> nice to me to condemn the --

nice to meet you. >> it was a pleasure to share this with you. i hope that the bay area will descend upon the plaza and go through these arts and crafts and by some holiday gifts. >> that would be amazing. thank you so much for the hard work that you do. >> all right. we're on. apologies for the difficulties and i want to welcome everyone to the special meeting of the government audit and oversight committee today on monday october 29 here in the city and

county of san francisco home of the world series champions giants. i am supervisor mark farrell. i am the chair of the committee and joined by supervisor chiu and will be joined by supervisor elsbernd. i want to thank the staff for covering today's meeting. madam clerk do we have any announcements? >> yes. please make sure to silent any electronic devices and items acted upon today will be on the agenda anyplace otherwise stated. q. can you do item one and two together please? >> item one is a hearing and resolution and "deja vu all over again: san francisco's technology needs a culture shock." >> thank you very much. president chiu. >> thank you mr. chair. i

wanted to make a couple of introductory comments and thank you for taking part in this hearing and in particular i want to thank the civil grand jury report for looking at this topic. i decided to bring with me today these folders. these folders represent all of the documents i have been looking at in the last couple of years on this specific topic and in particular let me just title a couple of the reports i have on this. from 2002 from the former executive director from dits, which is the predecessor agency to the department of technology and proposal for management and resources. then go a couple years later the civil grand jury report looked at our technology with hospital "pot holes or possibilities" and a year later the city controller had a

letter and said they needed to improve service and performance measures. after that our city analyst did a management audit into their practices and two years later a another analyst looking into the city's purchasing process and many pages devoted to this and i think the report deja vu all over again is in fact and i would include "ground hog day or year". all of the reports said the same thing over and over again and those that have been focused on the it issues in the city knows this and we have departments doing the same thing when we ought to have one centralized department focused on these efforts. i think as folks know we have for years 70

system when is we ought to have a one and dozens of data centers when we ought to have one and when we have a streamlined and smaller agreement scpis could go on and on as you know. we identified these problems over the decade and somewhat can't solve them as the civil grand jury report pointed out we have a budget that is pushing $250 million i continue to be told by city staff and vendors that we could save tens of millions of dollars and be more efficient if we manage our information technology. now i do hope that today's session is an opportunity to talk about good and creative ideas. one of the phenomena i have seen is frankly a lot of finger pointing at different departments and who is at fault, and i think it's important to think why we got to this place, but what is the road map that is going to change

thins? i know there are some that hope if and when we hire a new cio will change things and i want to note we had four individuals in those positions in the last ten years and not much as changed. the structure of how we govern ourselves from a it standpoint has not changed significantly and i am eager to hear the presentation from the civil grand jury report and again i thank you for your due diligence and hard work and i look forward to the conversation. >> thank you supervisor chiu for those remarks and welcome back to version two or three of this year. i also want to thank the other departments overing potential response focus we need them and others will speak as well and i would like to invite you up to share your report.

>> good afternoon supervisors. on behalf of the civil grand jury i am marty choy and i person on this report and i will turn it over to the chair of the investigative committee. thanks. >> thank you. >> welcome back. >> we always seem to be getting together to celebrate the day after the giants have done something spectacular. it makes it difficult to prepare for these reports as a result of that but i would like to make a brief stop and -- didn't stop your remarks to supervisor chiu. you made our report for us and i thank you for many of the comments we will reiterate as part of the formal report, but to thank i would like to thank chairman farrell and president chiu for giving us this opportunity to sort of fill in

a little bit of the things that we really think are important to state publicly about what we have found and what we think is wrong in technology. i would like to thank also the members of the civil grand jury who are here. i feel at home and with a meeting of with you all here and need a roundtable and everybody else and always neat in private and if you for that and i would like to thank the participants that met with us individually and together to discuss their proposals and the future. the title of "deja vu all over again: san francisco's technology needs a culture shock." reflects a history that we uncovered within city

government t appears from the responses that we got from city administrators and some department heads no matter who says it or how many times it's said major changes to how technology is organized, managed and evaluated remains mired in a self protecting culture demonstrated at the highest level of city administrators and by some leaders of major departments. this we find has lead to continuous unnecessary costs, unnecessary duplication of services and unnecessary inefficiencies. it doesn't have to be that way. our past city cio has we have heard, the city budget analyst and another

budget report, pafl civil grand jury and now this grand jury has each reached similar changes to how technology is organized and managed to remedy this situation so far to no avail. it came as quite a shock last week to receive the responses to our report from the office of the mayor signed by him and his top managers. their assertion that the structure employed by the -- by the city for technology quote insures coordination and efficiency while preserving department autonomy closed quote. that flys in the face of history and it flys in the face of reality. this coordination and efficiency the result of 15 year old justice project with its way over blown budget and continuously blown schedule and still not fully implemented,

the coordination and efficiency snail pace to mix these email systems within a single government which shouldn't have proliferated in the first place. email consolidation began years ago and today many departments have joined in the consolidation but that is 4,000 of the 23,000 city users, 17%. another 11 departments with 12363 users to be somewhat precise or about 54% are now equalled to join in this consolidation. however, 14 departments with more than 7,000 users with 30% are not even scheduled to join the consolidation, and from our interviews some are considering whether or not to participate at all. this coordination and

efficiency found in the emerge project that began in february 2009 with a phase one completion target of february february 2010. it was transferred from human resources to the controller's office because it was stalled. phase one went live in august 2011. the controller's office and the city ought to be complemented for that. however phase one, phase two and phase three were originally scheduled to be completed in me 2011. now scheduled to 2013. the coordination and efficiency found apparent department confusion for radio equipment and systems as discussed at the most meeting a few days ago. mta is planning move forward with its plans to replace its analogue radios. that surpleasely brought up other departments interest in

replacing their radios including bay web, the public safety system. where is the coordination that mayor and staff boasts about that would have reprented this at the meeting? that begs the question are we headed to seven independent systemsalla email and who can predict that? the city is moving to replace the 25 year old famous system. if you like what you saw with the programs just mentioned think what you can look forward to. how much wasted money, time, and efficiencies have these and other snail paced projects cost? how much more will san francisco has to endure before serious change is made? i ask you as members of the board of supervisors should the city consider improvements to the structure and system that allows this waste to continue over and

over? is it appropriate to consider the five year ict plan, which by the way was born through the 2010 efforts of the board of supervisors, and do you consider it a strategic plan as the office of the mayor is, when it is primarily in the current form s a project by project instrument and only where new money is concerned. what city wide values are incorporated that provide the backbone for a city strategy? where is the strategy for the future or even the present? there is little strategic that we found of the office of the mayor states there is no scarcity of data even with city technology. is it considered sufficient to do it on a city wide basis and not on a city view. there is no analysis where cost savings

would come department to department or the city as a whole in the data presented. when a project boasts of cost savings with data consolidation there is no way of determining who or where the estimated $3 million was saved or what became of it. shame on you that says that the current structure ensures coordination and efficiency. what it does ensure is the status quo. it ensures the behavior of department technology. it ensures the lack of cooperation. what the office of the mayor response does is prove our recommendations are worthy of serious considerations by the board of supervisors. we are here today to share our views with the board of supervisors, the only body within city government that we're aware of that has been willing to step up in recent times as you did in 2010 by mushing