Mayor Newsom Announces Winning Ideas From ImproveSF Campaign.

Brightidea's WebStorm and Switchboard solutions help city gather and identify winning ideas for groundbreaking Open Innovation Campaign.

San Francisco, CA -- Mayor Newsom announced the winning ideas from the City's ImproveSF.org open innovation campaign in his budget remarks on Tuesday.

The campaign is designed to encourage cost-saving ideas from the City's employees. Over $90,000 in cost savings from two winning ideas and two revenue generating ideas were identified and chosen for implementation.

"ImproveSF.org tapped into the knowledge and experience of our city employees to help solve some of our most critical financial issues," said Mayor Newsom. "The initiative and the winning ideas are part of a larger story on how government in partnership with its employees can encourage innovation."

The ImproveSF.org program served as a tool for the City to encourage and collect ideas from its employees. In a matter of weeks, there were 700 active participants, 4,000 votes, and nearly 700 comments. Of the 569 total ideas submitted, 4 were chosen for immediate implementation. Many others are under review for possible savings or revenues. Winning ideas included:

• Eliminating Hold Music, for which the city pays over $900 per month.
• Reducing Washing of Municipal Vehicles, for which the city pays $75,000 per year.
• Allowing 311 to take credit card payments for selling City & MUNI Merchandise.
• Auctioning Surplus and/or Unwanted Property and Vehicles.

The ImproveSF.org campaign builds on momentum created by the Open Gov Initiative for the City and County of San Francisco which focuses on open data, open participation and open source.

ImproveSF.org was created with a San Francisco based company, Brightidea Inc. which provides on-demand innovation management to help collect, prioritize, and manage cost-saving and revenue-generating ideas. Ideas submitted through the innovation portal powered by Brightidea's WebStorm solution were evaluated by select department heads using Brightidea's Switchboard product.

About Brightidea
Brightidea is the market leader in On-Demand Innovation Management. Over 300 businesses around the world use its Software-as-a-Service suite to transform their employee, partner and customer ideas into a reality.

Founded in 1999, Brightidea (www.brightidea.com) is closely held and headquartered in San Francisco, CA.