A Complete List of SF Government Entities

How "bureaucratic" is SF, exactly?

Any decent conversation about government includes a lament about endless “bureaucracy”. But how bureaucratic is government, exactly? That would be helpful to know if you wanted to lament with confidence¹, and it would be essential to know if you wanted to do something about it.

But almost nobody knows. In fact, in San Francisco, almost nobody in government knows either. How can we talk about system change if we don’t even have a list of parts in that system?

The List

Luckily, you can just do stuff. So I spent much of the last year researching our local government and then pestering a poor soul² in the City Attorney’s office to confirm my findings. I’ve now published the first artifact of that work: a complete list of SF government entities.

The repo has a list of every government entity I’ve been able to identify and the relevant legal source. The major categories are:

• Elected

• Boards and Commissions

• Departments

• Advisory

What to Do with it

At the very least you can lament properly, but I’d prefer if you use this list to do stuff.

Use the list to ask questions. Is there more or less than you expected? How many people do we elect? Just how many commissions are there? And which law(s) make them exist?

Use the list to build stuff. I’m using it as a basis to build a model of the SF government. If you have questions or project ideas and you’d like to chat - hit me up!³

Long Live the List

Government is complex and dynamic, so the list will never be “done”. I will update it as I learn more and as things change, but teamwork makes the dream work, so I welcome PRs too!

The project will be more useful (and cooler) if we can automatically generate and update the list. Reach out if you want to work on this with me!

1. Alas, vibes don’t get it done.

2. Shoutout to Elizabeth Coolbrith for answering my emails. Many more to come :)

3. twit, email