Authored By david.morton

Code for America representatives toured former industrial sites that have since been transformed into Chattanooga’s Southside. They hope to soon join a transformation in the city’s digital infrastructure, too.

Three San Francisco-based fellows will meet with city and community leaders over the next month. During that time, they will identify a problem, or two, in how the city functions and then spend 2014 developing digital solutions. The yearlong program is funded by city government and the Benwood and Lyndhurst foundations.

Mayor Andy Berke introduced the Chattanooga team at the downtown co-working space, Society of Work, Monday evening. He ticked off a list of startup companies that “are defining what’s happening in our city” and nodded to EPB’s fiber optic infrastructure, which has brought new talent and business development to the self-proclaimed “Gig City.”

Code for America introduces the culture of Silicon Valley to American municipalities, where stodgy bureaucracies are traditionally slow to adopt new technological advances.

“City government shouldn’t be at the end of this curve. We should be at the front with everyone else,” Berke said.

In other cities, the organization has created an app to streamline business registration, a system to give citizens a voice in dealing with blighted properties and a strategy to help close the digital divide between economic classes.

And for Chattanooga?

The fellows don’t come in with a preconceived notion about the project they will ultimately pursue. What they bring instead is a skillset of software engineering, design and creative problem-solving, developer Jason Denizac said.

“It’s not just about the end product,” he said.

Their research and work will feed into a local brigade of volunteer developers and designers formed by Open Chattanooga. The fellows will go through an extensive process early on that will allow them to meet with city officials and demonstrate how the private sector approaches technology, Denizac said.

The Code for America fellowship is part of a push by the Berke administration to open government’s doors to digital solutions. Startup CHA gives startups a chance to test new ideas and apps on city infrastructure. The Public Library is experimenting with ways to reinvent itself amid digital disruption.