Can a mobile app really transform the way citizens engage with their elected representatives? What does a neighborhood community look like online? Will visualizing data lead to improved conditions for urban residents?
These are questions that Microsoft’s Technology & Civic Engagement team think about every day. So when we had the opportunity to host author Stephen Goldsmith for a discussion of his newest book The Responsive City, we were on it like bits on a byte. Goldsmith has an impressive CV: In addition to authoring many books on government reform and innovation, he served as deputy mayor of New York, mayor of Indianapolis, and chief domestic policy advisor to the George W. Bush campaign in 2000. Today, he is the Daniel Paul Professor of the Practice of Government and director of both the Innovations in Government Program at Harvard Kennedy School as well as Data-Smart City Solutions.
Professor Goldsmith and his Harvard colleague Susan Crawford wrote The Responsive City: Engaging Communities Through Data-Smart Governance to highlight the ways in which cities are getting smarter. Professor Crawford describes the book in more depth in her recent guest blog post.
Last Thursday Professor Goldsmith delivered a community book talk in San Francisco to a sold out crowd at SPUR. Among the attendees were representatives from the City of San Francisco’s Department of Technology and Office of Civic Innovation as well as Code for America. Goldsmith presented examples of urban innovations from cities across the US before addressing questions from the audience. A key message that seemed to resonate 
with them: Government needs to be restructured for cities to have the chance to thrive. As Goldsmith put it, “The way we make sure cities don’t abuse discretion is to make sure there’s no discretion to abuse.” If we do not empower municipal employees to make decisions for the communities they know and love, then we cannot expect to live in responsive cities. Another tip that Goldsmith shared was to prioritize outcomes over activities. For example, focusing on the number of homeless people in a city will inspire more change than merely building more homeless shelters. If the desired outcome is to have fewer people without their own residences, then it is wiser to direct resources toward initiatives that will prevent homelessness.
