Abhi Nemani: Interim Chief Innovation Officer, City of Sacramento

Whether you're new to civic tech or a veteran, we're fortunate this week to have Abhi Nemani - writer, speaker, organizer, and technologist - joining us to share his insights on the future of civic innovation and Sacramento's role in shaping that future.

Abhi is currently building a govtech startup called EthosLabs (http://ethoslabs.us/), designed to accelerator good government through great technology. Additionally, Mayor Kevin Johnson of Sacramento has appointed him as interim Chief Innovation Officer (http://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/news/2016/03/16/meet-sacramentos-chief-officer-of-innovation.html) to build out the city's budding startup sector, through venture investments, grants, and partnerships (http://civichall.org/civicist/sacramento-approves-10-million-largest-city-innovation-fund-us/#.V3WiMAPum64.twitter). Previously, he served as the first Chief Data Officer for the City of Los Angeles (http://abhinemani.com/press/latech/), where he led the city's efforts to build an open and data-driven LA. As CDO, Abhi led Los Angeles to #1 ranking for US open data cities (http://abhinemani.com/press/techwire/), by publishing over 400 datasets (http://data.lacity.org/) and earned the city the Platinum Open Data Certification; to help put that data to work, he mobilized LA's growing developer community by hosting hackathons and by building independent civic tech non-profits. To drive innovation within city hall, Abhi built a nationally-recognized Mayoral Dashboard (http://lamayor.org/dashboard), led data and analytics trainings for city staff, and piloted data science projects to address key policy issues (http://abhinemani.com/press/huffpo/).

Before joining LA's Mayors Office, he helped build, launch, and run the national non-profit, Code for America (http://codeforamerica.org/), a technology organization dedicated to reinventing government for the 21st century. Abhi led CfA’s product strategy as its teams tackled local government challenges ranging from transparency and business licensing to food stamps and public safety. He also led the organization's efforts to scale through building multiple new programs: a first-of-its-kind civic startup accelerator, an international volunteer corps, and a collaborative network for hundreds of government innovators. Additionally, Abhi developed the organization’s policy portfolio — working hand-in-hand with area experts and local leaders — to enact over 30 municipal policy reforms on topics including open data, healthcare, and procurement.

Abhi's work has been featured (http://abhinemani.com/press) in the New York Times, Government Technology, Government Executive, and Forbes, and he has been featured as a speaker (http://abhinemani.com/talks) at SxSW, the World Bank, and various universities and conferences around the world.

Code for Sacramento's weekly meetup, where we hear what teams are working on, pitch new ideas, possibly hear a speaker on an interesting topic, and most importantly, hack!

Also, we eat pizza.