(1) The city needs to create policy to allow fiber to quickly and easily deployed in the city. DPW needs to allow microtrenching and have an easy permitting process in place. This will allow smaller ISPs to provide Gigabit internet speeds to residents for under $100/month.
(2) Alternatively, the city could set up a municipal fiber network. And lease access to ISPs.
See http://sffiber.info/ for more information.

If the Federal Gov won't do it it's going to be up to the cities themselves to step up. Make the datasets available (especially for things like transit) and let us nerds dive in.

See Reset San Francisco's YouTube Petition for City Hall to see how tech can improve communication and idea flow

The private sector is producing great tools that government could use but it always seems to bog down in procurement. Empower city employees on the front line to deploy low cost SaaS technologies with all the red tape. It's still often easier for a CIO to pay millions for a custom piece of software than for the person who needs that software to put down a credit card and get something for $50/month.

OpenGov data is a triple win, making possible accountability, overall cost savings, & offering citizen entrepreneurs new biz opportunity (which in turn may generate more revenue for the city or region). Create a role/team/process to engage with small start-up entrepreneurs & others in *new* business creation to sustain terms, policy, etc. that encourage new OpenData centric business.

Send SMS alerts on street-sweeping days.

Telecom sector analyst and Publisher, StimulatingBroadband.com

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/06/201162114131825860.html ....."if he ain't dead, he's dead now", that Filmer took his own life and his girlfriends in their hands by pointing a camera at cops with their guns pointing at them, the cops can say they thought the camera was a gun and they had to shoot. FYI.........NEVER POINT ANYTHING AT A COPS GUN, NEVER...

When the big one hits one less thing to worry about...