San Francisco Civil Grand Jury Receives Excellence in Reporting Award

November 14, 2014

California Grand Jurors’ Association

Press Release

The California Grand Jurors’ Association has granted the Robert Geiss Excellence in Reporting Award to the 2011-12 San Francisco Civil Grand Jury for its report, “Deja Vu All Over Again, San Francisco's City Technology Needs a Culture Shock.”The report focused on the structure and management of technology within the City and County of San Francisco. Through extensive document inspection, over 40 interviews, meeting attendance and site inspections, the grand jury found:

• outdated technology from the 1970s,
• lack of coordination and cohesive vision among departments,
• difficult-to-document waste that the underlying departmental cultures generate and
• technology so decentralized and non-standard that no one had a handle on the severity of the problem.

The report received extensive coverage in local media. Four public hearings were held. As a result, San Francisco hired a new chief information officer and replaced two Department of Technology senior administrators to lead the effort in solving the problems.The Robert Geiss Excellence in Reporting Award recognizes a grand jury report that is of high quality, has a positive impact on the community, and increases awareness of the California grand jury system. The award was presented on November 13 at the association’s 33nd annual conference held in Burbank. Allegra Fortunati and Todd Lloyd accepted the award on behalf of the San Francisco Civil Grand Jury.

Todd Lloyd and Allegra Fortunati,

Members of the 2011-12 San Francisco Civil Grand Jury

The California Grand Jurors’ Association is a statewide nonprofit organization of former grand jurors with the mission “to promote government accountability by improving the training and resources available to California’s 58 regular grand juries and educating the public about the substantial local government oversight and reporting powers these grand juries have.”