Managing Director Rich Negrin resigns from city government

As Mayor Michael Nutter’s term winds down, city managing director Rich Negrin is leaving the City of Philadelphia to join a law firm.
Since Negrin joined City Hall in 2010, he’s driven many of the city’s innovation efforts. His office oversaw the creation of the city’s coworking-esque Innovation Lab and the program to send city staffers to “innovation school” at Philadelphia University. He took an interest in apps that aimed to facilitate communication between city government and its citizens, like the Philly311 app and the myPhillyRising app (though, concerning the latter, the city has learned that user acquisition is no easy feat). He was also an early supporter of open data.
“You can create the most pristine property assessment system, but if you’re not putting everything on the web where people can see their property values and exactly what you’re doing and what characteristics get you there and what you’re basing it on, you’re screwing it up,” he said to Technical.ly Philly back in 2011. (He helped steward the city’s property reassessment calculator two years later.)
He even attended the official launch for N3rd Street.
Negrin is joining Philadelphia law firm Obermayer Rebmann Maxwell & Hippel. He’s also currently working with Penn’s Fels Institute to develop courses on, among other things, “driving innovation and organization change in government,” according to a release.