Hacking for innovation: from Silicon Valley to a parking space near you

I think I first started longing to go to San Francisco as I read my way through Amistead Maupin’s famous Tales of the City series. The books depict said city as a colourful whirl of decadence and debauchery, with a quirky cast of characters that rendered my own friends and neighbours disappointingly pedestrian by comparison.

Then I saw the excellent film Milk which added a layer of politics and activism to my picture of San Francisco. Next the dot.com boom and the rise of Silicon Valley came along to revise my vision of the city again. Clearly San Francisco was going to be a complex city full of life, beauty, politics, and contradictions. And in the day I’ve been here so far, I’m pleased to report that I’ve not been disappointed, even though I haven’t yet met Maupin’s Mrs Madrigal…

My portfolio covers US – UK diplomacy on a range of policy areas, including trade and investment, science and innovation, and the internet and intellectual property. California is, of course, one of the world’s top ten economies, and the UK is the 2nd largest employer in California (supporting 81,000 jobs), the 2nd largest investor in California and the second largest market in Europe for Californian exports – as well as being home to Silicon Valley which “does” innovation fabulously.

And so that’s a lot of reasons for me to be in California this week.

Today was the first day of my trip and – having gone on an exceptionally virtuous run at 6am (alas the result of jetlag) – I’ve had a range of really good meetings.  But one struck me as particularly worth talking about, and that was with the young, dynamic and super enthusiastic Jay Nath who is Chief Innovation Officer for the Mayor of San Francisco.

His ambition is to work with the tech community and the public to help ‘reinvent government in the digital age”.  Not a small task. And not one which is unfamiliar to the UK. In fact, in our discussions we found that we are in some ways treading similar paths.

One way in which we found common ground is in a shared ambition to make Government data public. Not, in lots of ways, an easy thing to do. But its impact can be transformative, enabling ordinary citizens to not just understand and engage through access to the data, but also to develop new opportunities using open data. San Fransicsco has already made great strides towards this goal. It’s also been a priority for the UK Government – for example, one recent initiative has been putting 5400 datasets into one place (more are coming!) to really open up British Government.

Another path that the UK and San Francisco are both treading is to find a way of really making e-Government work.  By which I mean moving from a world where e-Government means being able to print off a pdf document and sent it by post(!), to a world where the whole experience can be online.

In the UK we are just trialling a new website that does just that.  There’s still a lot of work to do but the UK Government’s commitment is to get to a world where everything from applying for a passport to applying for jobs is all done online. And here in the US – as Jay and I discussed – what could be more appropriate than for the home of Silicon Valley to lead the e-Government charge…

But the idea that charmed me most during our meeting was a concept that does just the opposite – bringing innovation from the digital world into the physical world. I was particularly taken with PARK(ing) Day, a global concept born in San Francisco, where people drop money into parking meters, and then ‘hack’ the intended use of their allocated parking space by literally building temporary miniature parks (aka ‘parklets’) on the space which they use til the meter runs out.

The point is to challenge the status quo and draw attention to the need for public spaces, and how they are allocated. Despite the obvious differences, the concept has parallels with the drive for open data – they both inspire and empower citizens to engage and act to impact their surroundings and circumstances.

And so, as I set off to dinner tonight, I’m not sure whether I’m in search of Amistead Maupin’s city, Harvey Milk’s city, or Silicone Valley… but I’m really hoping to come across a ‘parklet’.