‘We’re the office of yes’: Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics aims to be public/private incubator for problem-solving

There’s a new office in City Hall, but it doesn’t sound like the stodgy bureaucracy you might expect.

The small office, with its two co-directors and two temporary staffers, will test out new ways of solving old city problems. It hopes to inject this spirit of innovative problem-solving into the city’s many agencies. And get this, the mayor wants them to fail — fast, and learn, of course.

“The mayor said if we don’t fail, we’re not trying hard enough,” says co-director Story Bellows. “And we’ve certainly taken that to heart.”

Inspired by Boston’s office of the same name, the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics is bringing the startup mentality into City Hall. Most city departments are running programs and can’t spend their days thinking up new ways to improve quality of life in the city, Bellows says. That’s where Bellows and her co-director Jeff Friedman come in.

“We’re the office of ‘yes,” Bellows says she and Friedman like to joke.

They know there are Philadelphians who are already working on innovative ways to make the city better. Bellows says her office, branding itself as a public/private partnership (much like the Open Access Philly network), wants to be the bridge between those problem-solvers and city government.

The office’s first project was piloting an effort to crowdfund the city’s tree planting campaign with startup Citizinvestor. Next up is sharing Code for America-built civic input tool Textizen with the city’s departments (the Planning Commission piloted the tool) and launching Neighborhow, a Code for America-built guide of neighborhood best practices.

While the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics is currently working as part of the Mayor’s Office and doesn’t have its own budget, Bellows says an executive order to officially create a separate office is in the works.

Bellows previously worked in Washington, D.C. as the Director of the Mayors’ Institute on City Design. She moved to Philly six months ago to join the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics. Friedman previously held the title of Philly’s Manager of Civic Innovation and Participation. He was also former Chief Technology Officer Allan Frank‘s chief of staff and started working for Philly’s city government when he graduated from law school. [Updated, see below]

For more, check out this article on TechPresident.

Updated 10:54 a.m. 10/15/12: Jeff Friedman has not worked for the city since graduating law school. Rather, he started working for the city after law school and spent seven years as a consultant to governments across the country before returning to city government.