The official in charge of “innovation” within San Francisco’s government is departing City Hall, marking the second major personnel shuffle within Mayor Daniel Lurie’s administration this week.
Former McKinsey consultant Florence Simon was hired last spring to run the Office of Innovation, which is tasked with modernizing city technology to expedite progress on the mayor’s priorities. The personnel change was first reported by the San Francisco Standard. Simon did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday evening.
Simon’s departure is effective immediately, according to a spokesperson for the mayor’s office, who said the staffing change was a mutual decision following a recent grant to expand the office.
“We are grateful for Florence’s service to this office and for her accomplishments solving some of San Francisco’s most complex challenges,” the spokesperson said. “We wish her continued success in her future endeavors.”
Simon previously served in former President Joe Biden’s Department of Transportation, as well as on the Biden-Harris transition team. Under her leadership, the innovation office overhauled San Francisco’s arcane permit system, launching an online portal last month allowing people to apply for permits on the city’s website.
Lurie’s administration came under scrutiny last year, however, when the city awarded a $5.9 million contract to OpenGov, the San Francisco firm which developed the portal and had ties to the nonprofit Lurie founded before he became mayor. The Lurie administration solicited ideas from a range of companies but ultimately selected OpenGov without putting the contract out to bid.
Lurie’s administration said OpenGov was not selected because of its distant connections to the mayor, but because it was the best choice to design a more modern permitting system.
In February, the Board of Supervisors approved a $7 million grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies to fund and expand the Office of Innovation through Dec. 2028. The funding follows a four-year, $3.4 million grant that the office received in 2021 from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charitable arm of billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
The office is set to add four new staff members under the new grant. Lurie said in a video posted to Instagram in February that the funding would “help us streamline our processes around food access, police hiring, homeless service delivery.”
Simon’s departure comes less than a week after the Chronicle reported that the head of San Francisco’s homelessness agency, Shireen McSpadden, would step down from her role effective June 30. The vacancies will allow Lurie to make new appointments in two of his priority policy areas.