The Dawn of the Municipal Chief Innovation Officer

There’s been an odd paradox in public opinion around government over the last few years. Distrust of government, at just about every level, is at an all-time high. Americans think their governments are broken, inert, corrupt. But, at the same time, we’re witnessing the rise of the so-called civic hacker, a growing army of deeply committed, tech-savvy city-dwellers who don't necessarily want to work for government, but who wouldn’t mind spending a Saturday afternoon benevolently coding its data.

“There’s this one side of the coin where people see just this disenchantment and negative view of government,” says Jay Nath, the Chief Innovation Officer for the city of San Francisco. “But there’s also this flip side where people actually believe that working with government, we can make a better solution and better improvements for our society.”