francisco sfgtv meeting of the small business commission occurring june 9, 2014, will begin shortly. >>

>> the city of san francisco sfgtv meeting of the small business commission occurring june 9, 2014, will begin shortly. >>

>> meeting is called to order at 5:37 p.m., we will conduct the roll call, commissioner adams? >> here. >> commissioner dooley >> here. commissioner riley. >> here. >> and tour-sarkissi a. >> correction, they communicated that they will be arriving late. >> okay, thank you. >> item two, general public

comment. general public comment is for this item and all other public comment period during the meeting is limited to three minutes per speaker. please, deliver the speaker cards. >> do we have a member of the public that would like to make a comment on any items that is not on today's agenda? >> seeing none, public comment is closed. next item please. >> approval of the april, 28, 2014 regular meeting minutes, this is an action ilt em.item >> i move. >> second. >> all in favor? >> aye. >> the motion passes, four in favor and none opposed. takes us to item four, presentation on the status of san francisco on-line business portal development this is a discussion item.

and we have jane dom from the department of technology to provide a staff report. >> check, check. thank you so much for having me. and i am really excited to be back, this is familiar territory, i get to see so many familiar face and welcome commissioner tour-sarkissian. and i am here to give you an update on the san francisco business portal, this is a project that i have been working on for the last six months and really excited to show you the progress that we made. the first couple of slides i am going to go through, for some of you it will be a little bit of a review from our commission retreat. but for a few others, this is a good place to start to sort of catch you up on what we have been up to. first i officially moved over from the office of small business, into the department of technology, at the end of november to lead the business,

portal team and on december 23rd, we were fortunate enough to hire angel quiksy who is the first team member, and january 6th is when we tried to expedite the rfp process and expedite in quotes i will put. and so we were able to hire a professional services vendor to help us complete the project and on february 18th. we brought on the second team member, jason hemerly we began the project with our goal, and i call it the bag, which is a big audasious goal and the goal was to create the first stop for everything business in san francisco and a comprehensive business portal that supports businesses in san francisco, from their inception through their growth. and we are helping our entrepreneurs during their entire life cycle of their business. we had a really good opportunity here because we

wanted to create a compelling customer experience across city departments. to really demonstrate that san francisco is a business-friendly place and that we really care about the success of our business owners in the city. the business portal is the first important step in that direction. and we conducted our user experience of user interface research, we were able to conduct primary and secondary research. and so the research, we visited our interviewees, and we interviewed people and had work sessions with the city department and members of the small business community and we investigated what information constituents need and seek and what operations they need to perform and how they are processed to plan, start and grow a business in the city can

be improved. so during the research, our professional services firm conducted interviews of actually myself because i was previously a business counselor in the office of small business, as well as martha, and we did i am pretty sure it was over 6 dollars and let's say $4 to $6, we did intense interview sessions where we sat down and went through the entire process of what the business counselor does when the business owners came into the office of small business and we conducted a group of 20 internal stake holders and these are 20 people from nine different city departments who came together for three hours and we did this extensive research workshop and we had everyone discuss the types of service these provide and ways that we can all work together to improve that service. and we also held a workshop with three members of the mayor's small business advisory committee. as you can see, that is scott right there in that picture. and i believe that henry,

carnila was part of that as well and that was at 90-minute group interview. and what was really important for us was to create and conduct the qualitative research with 9 different small business owners at different phases of starting or owning their business and the business owners feedback was really important to understand the challenges that they had, throughout their journey of owning a business in san francisco. we also audited over 100 sites and so we looked at current cities, and state and federal business portals and on-line resources and looked at other u.s. cities and state portal and looked at non-governmental experiences and societies important to get a good, wide, range of different sites and portal to look at. and we also studied the osb survey that regina conducted last year with all of the service providers and our internal city departments so

all of this information, led us to our research, research, findings. what you see here is the customer journey map, what we were able to determine is that customers as they go through the process of starting and growing their business in san francisco, really went through three key stages, consider and prepare and set up and establish the business and finally they tried to maintain and grow the business. and we will identify the key activities as they went through each phase and they looked at the process and what you see is that in the first phase and consider and prepare and it is really more of a linear process. and that experience we looked at was very enjoyable. but also, difficult. and as they moved into the set up and the established phase, the enjoybility really decreased because it is so

complex, we have so many owners and regulations over the business owners for them to start. and it became a lot more difficult. and that is where you see the representation of this, i call it the infinity loop, because it is not a linear process any more and people are going around to different city departments, they are searching through the different web sites and looking at various resources in order to get through this set up and established period and as they get through that, those that are successful will then maintain and grow their business, and again, there is a lot of opportunity to provide resources to help them through that part of the journey and the enjoybility goes up and the difficulty is still there. we looked at the key departments that are involved throughout this process and identified of the different city departments and resources that will help us throughout the building of the portal.

>> we came up with design principal and we want to do the right thing and we want to kurate the content and make it accessible and we want to treat our constituents as customers. dull out the light, which is an obvious one and let's make this enjoyable and fun and we want to increase trust. and really if you think about it, these principles are not just for building a portal, these are principles that we can apply throughout the entire city government as we deliver services to our constituents. >> the next step is to create the site map what you see in front of you is an early version of the site map, where we are now and it is a much larger picture and so i didn't want to over burden you with a lot of, a long piece of information, but, the site map as you see it, is when we

started to map out what the portal will look like and the different sections and the different, heading pages and the subpages, and all of the details ta go through it, and from that we produce the require frames, it is a visual representation of the website. and there is simple line drawings to present the proposed functionality and the structure and content and with the wire frames, every little detail where to place things, and where the information goes, and every little detail was discussed, and yeah, we put a lot of effort into thinking it through to make sure that this really makes sense to the user. we went into the content development and we researched and composed content for over 29 city department and we had 300 plus state and local forms

and 15 plus city ordinances with over 100 business resources. as of last thursday, 22 pages of content written over 20,000 words and we created ten business guides, 428 permits were researched and sorted and we this is not like creating a website to the place where the people poured over the content from the design we really had to start from scratch and we did the research with the different departments and the city and state and federal and we took that information and we were so conscious of making sure that we wrote the contract and the most easy in the most understood way to translate the information to different languages and that it is still

translatable. and so a lot of thought was put into this. i give you the preview, the data launch date will be september of this year and what you are seeing here is the click preview of the design of the home page. when everything was ready, i would love to have the opportunity to come back and do a demo for you guys to show you the detailed functionality of each page, and each piece. and but what you see here, is the design of our home page, and where we will have a start your business section, and manage your business, grow your business, permits and licenses, and where you can searching for the forms with explanations. and the different resources, so all of the content that i spoke of earlier, well, it will all be in this portal.

and i want to tell you about the fiscal, 13, 14, key initiative and since it will be not be launched until september, we will get the first quarter building up a site and building up the site and doing the user testing. >> as we complete the launch and it is not going to be finished we are going to continue to add to the portal. and what we really want to do in the next year is looking at stream lining the process and it is nice to have this user interface where we have the portal now that is the single go-to place for the business owners but we as a city need to look at the processes that are involved for our business whens they deal with the permitting and licenses. there is, yeah, i can't say enough that you can't just throw technology on top of a flawed process. you want to look at, you know, i am sure that we could just study what we have now and map it out. and identify some of the efficiency gaps, and maybe making the smallest of changes could have a huge impact on the

way that business owners experience their dealings with the city, perhaps something that used to take 30 days to go through, maybe we could identify areas where we could save time, perhaps we could cut it down to even ten days if possible and so i think that it is pertinent for us to look at the processes, identify the efficiency gaps and make the recommendations for improvement and work with the different departments to make these changes, and once we identify the process changes, we can then identify technology solutions that can make it even bet and her make the experience even better and for fiscal and 14, 15, the plan is to map out the 5 departments that are part of the tax collector's consolidated billing departments and they are tax collectors and office and dph and fire and entertainment and so we are going to work with these different department to map out the current state. and we are also looking at delivering additional

functionality to the portal. maybe look at the restaurant vertical and the restaurant as you know, are not a huge industry, and we create the jobs and you hire so many people in the city. and we want to look at it and potentially the restaurant and we are not set on that yet and it wi8 be based on the studies looking at the vertical where we can identify the process and do what we need to do to auto mate that process and that is something that will be a wonderful addition to the functionally of the portal if we are able to do that. in addition to that, we do need to create an operations and training manual and so in case, something happens, we have something to hand off to the next person who could still maintain and support the portal. and we have to physically audit all of the forms. and the department, and it is difficult for the departments to keep track of the conversion and the fee increase and things like that and so we will take

on the responsibilities of auditing that information and keeping the portal up to date. and content management, i and just spoke of and the technical maintenance and it is being built and as they release the version updates, we also have to make sure that the portal is up to date. so all of that work will be included in the next year. i want to recognize my team members, angelica and as well as jason who is slaving away in the office and it has only been six months and it has been a lot of work, and dedication and blood, sweat and tears that has been poured into this and we are all so very passionate about this project and we are thinking that this is making and this will make a huge difference on the lives of our small business owners. and so, without their hard work, we would not be where we are at and i would like to thank them for everything that

they have done, and last of all i will take the questions, also i want to thank the commissioners all of you have been such great advocates for this project. and yeah, you guys have been along for the ride. since the beginning and since the inception of the portal idea and so i want to thank you for all of your support along the way. >> great. >> any commissioner questions or comments? >> commissioner dwight? >> you did a good job and i am proud to be able to present this. this is awesome. >> thank you. >> good job, to you and your team. >> thank you very much. >> yeah. >> appreciate that. >> commissioner dooley. >> i want to thank jane because anything that we can do on the commission to help to make the lives of small businesses better, and easier, is something that we all need to work on. thank you. >> commissioner tour-sarkissian. >> i would also like to congratulate you and ask you a

question about the 29 departments that you have been dealing with. >> yes. >> before, september, before september 2014, what type of input do you need from these departments? are you right now dealing with them on a regular basis? what would you expect from these departments? so that your site launchs on time. >> sure that is a great question. i would not say that i would expect from them, but we are collaborating and the departments have all been great, because they, even though the initial research process, they really see the vision of creating this portal and this is not just for our business owners but it makes their lives easier and makes their staff lives easier and so we have been working very closely with them recently in having them approve the content that we have written, because we did not just copy and paste

their con tent from their website into ours, we rewrote pretty much everything, angel did. and now we are going back to each of the departments to make sure that we are able to double check all of the information that we have put together. as we gather every single permit form, we are writing a description of what the form is, and we talk about interdespendcy and we talk about fees and, due dates and things like that and we are also sending that back to the department as well. for them to help us we ask for for their approval. it is a time to see that there has never been a collaboration and this kind of an effort where we are taking the lead and pulling everyone together, and they want to help. they want to make things better. they want to see improvements, throughout. this is the opportunity for everyone to jump on board and so they have been helpful.

>> thank you, commissioner riley. >> congratulations and good job and i think that you are the best person for the job because you know the operation well and you have your high-tech background. so congratulations. >> thank you very much, commissioner yee riley thank you. >> commissioner white? >> i forgot to add that whatever we can do to make the small business lives easier. the question is how are we going to get this out to them? do you have a plan as far as out reach, you know, getting this out to the business community? >> with the september beta launch we are sort of going into it quietly in the beginning to get some user testing a little more feedback as we work out the bugs and fix all of the kinks but we are working on a marketing plan, definitely. >> great. >> there will be a full launch coming up as well, in and i can discuss some of the details of the plans next time.

>> great. >> do we have any members of the public that would like to make any comments on item four? >> seeing, none, public comment is closed. jane, you are awesome. this is, this is great, i am really happy and i liked your comments that you said that you are going to be working now with the treasurer and tax collector's office and you know that is going to be a big hurtle but if you can corral all of that with all of the city departments, you are a miracle worker. i know that this is not easy and you are doing a lot and i want to say thank you and, like what commissioner dooley and white said anything that you need from this office to help you out, please let us know and thank you, thank you this is you know, we are the most technical city in the world. and this is really going to help us. so thank you. >> thank you very much.

>> director? >> yes, i want to express my appreciation and although, losing you is a great loss to the office of small business with you we actually gained something greater by having you lead this project. so, i just wanted to extend my appreciation and thank you and jane is on target. so, which is not often the common thing in terms of meeting target goals, or target time lines, so, really want to send my appreciation. >> great. >> thank you. >> okay, next item please? >> we will call five and six together. >>discussion and possible

action to make recommendations to the board of supervisors (bos) on bos file no. 140508 [general obligation bonds - transportation and road improvement]: >> and item six isdiscussion and possible action to make recommendations to the board of supervisors (bos) on bos file no. 140509 [general obligation bonds - transportation and road improvement - $500,000,000]:. s both are a discussion and possible action items and we have you mta director ed reskin to make the staff presentation. >> welcome. >> good evening. >> good evening. >> do you want to use this one? >> good evening. >> thank you very much for having me here and it is always a pleasure and an honor to be able to come before the small business commission. i did brief you not too long ago, i think, on the larger transportation task force process that the mayor undertook last year. so this is really kind of a next step? seeking your consideration of support for the first revenue measure to come out of that, my