Does anyone want to be New York City’s tech mayor?

Many elections, whether local or national, feature a “tech guy.” A candidate running on a platform that promises to leverage technology to get government to operate at the cutting edge – something government is not well known for.

In 2021, the Democratic mayoral primary had a couple of these candidates, including New York City’s future mayor. While not his primary platform plank, then-candidate Eric Adams would go on to call himself a “tech mayor.” On the campaign trail, he promised to use technology to make New York City more efficient and effective. He talked about building a single data platform for all city agencies to operate on, producing a real-time score for city agency performance that goes “far beyond the often-self-congratulatory Mayor’s Management Report” and creating a single online portal through which to access all city services and benefits, called “MyCity.”

Adams didn’t appoint a deputy mayor for technology as some in the civic tech community were pushing for, but reorganized the city’s disparate technology offices under a new Office of Technology and Innovation, to be led by the top IT official at the New York City Police Department.

While Adams has functioned at many times as a tech evangelist – he converted his first paychecks to cryptocurrency and pushed new (and controversial) surveillance technologies – progress on the less flashy but more intensive work of transforming how city agencies operate has been hazier. Asked about whether all city agencies operate on a single data platform, a spokesperson for OTI pointed to a “Next Generation Data Platform” that he said has supported over 100 data exchanges across more than 50 agencies so far. And the city doesn’t have a real-time score for agency performance – the closest thing appears to be a “dynamic” version of the Mayor’s Management Report that updates at varying intervals, though OTI also pointed to a customer satisfaction report dashboard on agency interactions. And MyCity falls short of a one-stop portal. So far, it allows users to apply for child care benefits, and shares information about business licensing, job resources and an eligibility screener.

Chief Technology Officer Matt Fraser defended the progress that OTI has made in the past three years in a recent conversation with City & State, highlighting a program that contracts major providers to provide free internet at public housing developments, a still in-progress artificial intelligence action plan, and workforce recruitment efforts. “Since this administration’s outset, Mayor Adams has pursued a bold tech vision that made our city safer and more affordable for working-class New Yorkers – and the results speak for themselves,” OTI spokesperson Ray Legendre said in a statement. “The Adams administration has provided more residents with access to free internet than any city in the nation, rebuilt our city government services from the ground up to meet the needs of our 21st century city, successfully defended our critical services from constant cyber threats, and published the nation’s first broad artificial intelligence plan. We’ve continuously demonstrated our commitment to utilizing the best public and private sector ideas and resources to solve our city’s biggest challenges because that’s what New Yorkers deserve.”

Noel Hidalgo, executive director of the civic technology organization BetaNYC, said “his narrative was good,” of Adams’ talk of government modernization on the campaign. But the administration’s follow through was complicated, Hidalgo said, by operating on the belief that outside vendors could solve the city’s problems faster than they really could. The administration has largely outsourced the work of MyCity, for example, but suggests that New Yorkers accessing its services don’t care whether an outside vendor or in-house expert built it.

Now, with nine candidates running in the Democratic primary to replace Adams, the topic of government modernization isn’t much of a talker. So far, Comptroller Brad Lander is the only candidate to release a broad policy plan specifically on the topic of government modernization. Former Comptroller Scott Stringer – in what may be a pattern among candidates who have held that job – has addressed procurement reform, a major step experts say is needed to jump-start digital transformation of government. He also includes technology initiatives in his public safety plan.

Some candidates have also talked more vaguely about using technology as part of other platform planks, including policing. Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo advocates for a “strategic IT roadmap” for the NYPD and expanding surveillance technology. Former Assembly Member Michael Blake’s website refers to “modernizing constituent services” and hedge fund scion Whitney Tilson mentions leveraging machine learning and predictive analytics in his public safety plan.

That the wonky topic of government modernization isn’t top of mind among most candidates at this stage isn’t entirely surprising, even to those who are invested in that work. “The hard work of tech transformation within government is largely pretty boring,” said Julie Samuels, executive director of the industry organization Tech:NYC. “It’s spreadsheets and data entry and making sure that various systems talk to each other.”

And for candidates looking to stand apart from the field, there are better issues to run on to win an election. “Technology alone is rarely a winning issue,” New York City’s former Chief Technology Officer John Paul Farmer wrote in an email. But that doesn’t make it unimportant. “How technology can help improve the things people care deeply about – housing, transportation, safety, and more – that’s important and I’d like us to hear more about it,” he added.

The importance of the government’s ability to deliver digital services efficiently has repeatedly been demonstrated, including during the COVID-19 pandemic, when outdated systems and unfriendly user design delayed vaccine sign-ups and unemployment applications. “These days, if the technology doesn’t work, the policy doesn’t work,” Farmer said.

Several civic technology experts said that the major barriers to government modernization are procurement reform, civil services rules that slow down hiring and agencies working in data silos. “The mayor who is going to change things is a mayor who is going to change how technology is procured, not make grand, sweeping statements about what they’re going to build,” said Justin Isaf Man, the city’s former associate chief technology officer for digital services.

Lander’s plan leads with a few specific new technology initiatives – like a Yelp for NYCHA repairs and procuring an AI tool to sift claim and settlement data to identify patterns and reduce claims. Both are issues he has worked on as comptroller, and on the latter he said he’s in the process of putting out a request for proposals for that kind of tool. Lander’s plan gets broader when discussing some of the more substantive issues, but identifies procurement, hiring and data silos as areas where improvements are needed. “It’s understandable that people want to hear about the outcomes they want, like a safer and more affordable city, more than the process work that makes government able to deliver,” Lander said. “It’s extra work to get people to pay attention to it, to see why it matters, to care about it.”