But the devil dwells in the details \u2014\u00a0and, in San Francisco, he\u2019s got rent control.\u00a0<\/p>\n
OpenGov was unilaterally given a $5.9 million initial contract by the mayor\u2019s office over the objections of department staff, which scored another contractor much higher. But that would be water under the bridge \u2014\u00a0if OpenGov was performing well.<\/p>\n
Well, it isn\u2019t, at least not yet. Mission Local\u2019s Brandon Pho last week reported<\/a> that it\u2019s still only handling straightforward, simple permits and there is not a plan to lay out how it will matriculate to more complicated tasks or fully integrate across more city departments. At this point, city workers from different departments told Mission Local their teams are still forced to use the old permitting system simultaneously with OpenGov.<\/p>\n OpenGov has not yet replaced a paper job card with a virtual version \u2014\u00a0meaning inspectors cannot presently review their colleagues\u2019 notes from prior inspections via the system. On non-OpenGov permit inspections, inspectors are still relying on pencil-on-paper job cards to review their colleagues\u2019 notes. \u201cLots of people,\u201d laments one inspector, \u201cgot horrible, horrible handwriting.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n No matter. On Wednesday, a Board of Supervisors committee advanced a vote on extending OpenGov\u2019s contract<\/a> to the full board. While there is now an option to pull the plug after one more year, this contract could extend to 2031 at an additional $33 million. Again, there have been no coherent plans yet presented on how OpenGov will achieve the complicated tasks it presently cannot handle. Nor is there a plan to fix the myriad problems popping up on even the simple tasks it is now assigned to do.<\/p>\n In other news, last Monday the mayor\u2019s office announced a major shift<\/a> in how it would structure future contracts for homeless services, with providers now being subjected to performance-based metrics. Coming in the same week the supes advanced the warts-and-all OpenGov contract, it\u2019s enough to give you whiplash.\u00a0<\/p>\n The nonprofits ministering to the city\u2019s homeless will have to show their work, explain how they\u2019ll meet their goals \u2014 and be compensated based upon deliverables.\u00a0<\/p>\n The for-profit, untested tech firm shoehorned into its position by the mayor\u2019s office, meanwhile, was subjected to none of this.<\/p>\n Is compensating homeless providers based on their deliverables and performance a good idea? No.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s a great idea. With Chief of Health and Human Services Kunal Modi leading a platoon of McKinsey people now ensconced atop city government, it\u2019s no surprise that San Francisco would be gravitating toward performance-based contracting, just as Major League general managers have been gravitating toward analytics.\u00a0<\/p>\n Within the realm of San Francisco homeless services, this has been in the works for years. But first the city had to work to standardize homeless service contracts \u2014\u00a0so that outfits doing similar things aren\u2019t compensated in wildly different ways under wildly different contracts. The next step is to lard performance-based contracts with tangible deliverables. It won\u2019t be enough anymore to simply be remunerated for every toilet paper roll you buy or bottle of water you disseminate. Now providers will be incentivized to meet the actual outcomes that the city is seeking.\u00a0<\/p>\n The impetus for doing this, we\u2019re told, is not the reason half-bright misanthropes on Twitter seem to think it is. The goal here is not to punish lazy or even criminal providers who amass government money and don\u2019t do work. Rather, it\u2019s to detect problems before they become catastrophic<\/a>: Performance-based contracting will require intensive and ongoing contract monitoring, and the city can potentially intervene in a constructive way rather than a punitive one.\u00a0<\/p>\n Why has this taken so long? Many reasons, but the most significant one is: It\u2019s hard. Many homeless service providers are on five-year contracts with set renewal terms; the city was not in a position to simply alter them by fiat. The city has to determine which deliverables are true signifiers of \u201csuccess\u201d and what success in this realm even looks like \u2014\u00a0and incentivize providers to produce that.\u00a0<\/p>\n But the devil, once again, dwells in the details: Formulating these contracts is a bear. If the city is sloppy in the way it incentivizes providers \u2014\u00a0 and rewards them merely for the raw volume of people served \u2014\u00a0yes, that could lead to more able-bodied homeless people getting services and attention that would better be directed to harder-up people with intransigent problems.\u00a0<\/p>\n At some point, San Francisco is going to have to think deeply about what it wants to get out of shelters, outreach, permanent housing \u2014\u00a0everything. It\u2019s hard.\u00a0<\/p>\n Less hard, city officials say, would be formulating a performance-based contract for OpenGov \u2014\u00a0with actual deliverables and deadlines, and carrots and sticks for meeting them or missing them.\u00a0<\/p>\n This, of course, is exactly what the city didn\u2019t do.\u00a0<\/p>\n On Wednesday an analyst with the Board of Supervisors Budget and Legislative Analyst said that future payments to OpenGov would be tied to deliverables. But those deliverables have not yet been defined. Nor has the timeline for delivering them.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s a bit odd to be working out these basics well after a contract is awarded \u2014 let alone extended.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n And, to be frank: If this city\u2019s two prior elected mayors and their right-hand people eschewed a formal bidding process and unilaterally directed a contract to a favored provider to which they had connections<\/a>, it\u2019s the sort of thing that would elicit an FBI investigation, not a shrug.\u00a0<\/p>\n So that was an inauspicious way for OpenGov to start things off. And it\u2019s still not going great. OpenGov cannot yet handle the complex tasks that populate the San Francisco permitting system. And if the simpler tasks it is used for trigger ancillary requirements, OpenGov cannot yet deal with it<\/a> \u2014\u00a0forcing city workers to continue using the archaic software system OpenGov was supposed to supplant. Or, you know, read horrible, horrible handwriting.<\/p>\n City inspectors and contractors tell me that it\u2019s slower to turn around a rudimentary permit on OpenGov than it would have been to wander down to the Building Department and get it over the counter.\u00a0<\/p>\n Yes, installing new, overarching systems is complicated. But lots of things in city government are complicated \u2014\u00a0like homeless services. A wave of the hand and \u201cit\u2019ll get fixed,\u201d isn\u2019t very reassuring. But that\u2019s essentially what we\u2019re doing with OpenGov.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/homeless-shelter-001.jpg\")
A man watches television amid trash bags of belongings in the shelter on 21st and Capp streets. October, 2008.<\/p>\n![\"Ornate](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/082026_ZM_CityHall-11.jpg\")
The exterior of San Francisco City Hall on August 21, 2026. Photo by Zoe Malen.<\/p>\n
![\"Two](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Ondivision.jpg\")
On Division Street. Photo by Lydia Ch\u00e1vez, Jan 3, 2023.<\/p>\n