Bright ideas lift county

Part of life in local government is contend­ing with public-sector stereotypes about work­ers who spend their days indifferently pulling the levers of a bureaucratic machine that forever rumbles on.

That’s why it may come as a surprise to learn that 70 Alameda County [Calif.] managers and front-line em­ployees spent much of the summer inspiring each other and challenging themselves to find creative new ideas for improving local services. Partnering with the county on this outside-the-box exploration was the technology giant whose quirky name is synonymous with innova­tion: Google.

The unusual collaboration was the result of Google’s Government Innovation Labs, a new initiative to bring the same audacious moonshot thinking to government that Google employs in its never-ending search for new innovations — driverless cars, high-altitude Wi-Fi balloons and other far-fetched concepts that just might revolutionize the way we live.

Far from a summer fling with the booming tech sector, the Google partnership was the latest step in Alameda County’s extended in­novation journey to develop new solutions to pressing community problems in the 21st century.

A decade ago, we convened a conference called “Vision 2016,’’ where regional leaders worked with a futurist to identify emerging trends and ways public services could best adapt to them.

Since then, county initiatives such as com­munity and employee hackathons, a Millen­nial Task Force and an ambitious Climate Ini­tiative have driven new ways to approach and solve problems.

These efforts have brought impressive re­sults, including a suite of mobile apps providing instant access to voter registration, property, public safety and other vital information; an employee-spawned vendor invoic­ing system that reduces taxpayer costs by $500,000 annually; and a new procedure using electronic signatures that has quickened the process of obtaining judicial ap­proval of search and arrest warrants — and helped catch criminals.

For the county, the Google partnership was an obvious next step. Google and the tech world’s other leading disruptors have revo­lutionized business by bringing huge efficiency gains to customers and service providers.

We in local government yearn for similar gains as resources are hammered by budget cuts, revenues are siphoned away by public-sector partners upstream, and demand for our services grows unabated.

In May, Alameda County be­came one of the first two counties to participate in the Google project. The project offered a rich new oppor­tunity to engage in “10x thinking” and explore ways to further disrupt and transform local government. Teams of county employees fo­cused on local priorities — such as jobs, public safety and emergency preparedness — and ways to make services more efficient and trans­parent.

Ideas emerging from the Google sessions included an integrated online portal to guide customers through multijurisdictional steps involved in obtaining government permits as well as an expanded county disaster preparedness web­site that leverages GPS mapping elements to strengthen communica­tions between emergency providers and residents on the front lines.

Today, we encourage each of our 9,600 employees to think big, with­out fear of failure, in offering ideas for reshaping the way Alameda County serves residents. One of us just may have that idea that revolutionizes the way government serves the people.

California’s Kern and Joaquin counties are also participating in the Google Government Innova­tion Lab.

This commentary was first published by the Oakland Tribune My Word © 2015 Bay Area News Group, Sept. 30.