Louisville’s Chief of Civic Innovation steps down

Grace Simrall has stepped down as Chief of Civic Innovation and Technology for Louisville Metro Government after more than six years in the position.

In January, mayor Craig Greenberg took the helm, following Greg Fischer’s 12-year tenure. Simrall said the new leadership’s priorities and approach are “very different from the previous administration” and she felt it was the right time to leave and pursue something new.

Simrall told Cities Today she is proud of several achievements in Louisville and optimistic about civic innovation at an important moment for cities.

Louisville’s previous Chief Innovation Officer was one of the first to hold such a title in a US city and also oversaw economic development. When Simrall became Chief of Civic Innovation and Technology, it was the first time that IT reported to the innovation director so the role took on “a different flavour”.

The city’s early start on having a dedicated innovation function laid the groundwork for acceleration and expansion, she says, commenting: “I was standing on the shoulders of giants.”

Common language

One of these key foundations that Simrall believes set Louisville apart was a common language.

“We viewed innovation along a spectrum,” she explains. “On one end, you could think of innovation as the continuous improvement version of innovation, where it’s incremental and it’s oftentimes focused on efficiencies or improving internal operations.

“On the other end – what we are calling civic innovation – was breakthrough, so things that were completely new to government, whether that’s new because we were adopting or adapting from another government, regardless of level, or from a different industry.”

With innovation defined, Louisville dedicated separate resources to both ends.

“A lot of cities will have a single team trying to do all of it, and at least in my experience prior to joining city government and doing this in the private sector, it’s very difficult to do both. You oftentimes might find yourself [focusing on] low hanging fruit – where through very low cost or no cost methods, you can improve operations and get those efficiency gains.”

Building on the shared understanding of innovation and a culture that made it part of everyone’s remit, Simrall’s team was able to take on projects “at the tip of the spear…doing something completely new that no one had done before.”

Smart city foundation

One legacy that Simrall is proud of is laying “the foundation for the smart city”.

In the early days of ‘smart cities’, many local governments were running pilots but struggled to scale them up. The challenge was acute in a place like Louisville, which merged with Jefferson County in 2003 and delivers services across almost 400 square miles.

Simrall and her team saw an opportunity in 2017 to partner with the state to build out middle-mile fibre, including excess capacity owned by the city.

This meant making a business case to the metro council, who ultimately agreed it was a good investment and construction was completed in summer 2020. The additional more than 100 linear miles of municipal middle-mile fibre supports city facilities and smart city technologies.

“We were really thrilled to have that infrastructure in place,” says Simrall. “And it has certainly given us the flexibility to deploy things like public safety cameras or other smart city technologies in a much more flexible fashion than if we had gone the cellular route.”

“There’s opportunity to continue building on that network,” she adds. “We always viewed that as phase one.”

Simrall would have liked to be around to see the project develop further and spur private internet service companies to build out the last mile and offer new competitive options for residents.

“I’d like to think that announcement could come this year,” she says.

Future of work

Simrall also highlights her team’s work to prepare the city for technology and employment shifts.

“To really achieve our goal around increasing family-supporting wage jobs, we needed to have an intentional strategy around technology and tech jobs,” she explains.

Building on existing work such as Code Louisville, a free software and coding boot camp, Simrall led on the development of the Future of Work initiative, a first-of-its-kind public-private partnership with Microsoft and the Brookings Institution.

This programme, which launched in 2019 and concluded recently, aimed to prepare the city for the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation. Research from Brookings found that out of all the metro areas in the US, Louisville was eighth-most vulnerable to job losses due to automation. Its core industries are in sectors such as manufacturing and logistics, and even white-collar jobs that were once thought to be immune are increasingly under threat from technology.

“We had an eye on the fact that AI and automation were on the horizon,” says Simrall. “At that time, a lot of experts were saying this was still decades away, but we had a suspicion that it was going to come sooner.

“We really wanted to get ahead of this instead of reacting to it, which is oftentimes what government does. We look at that breakthrough innovation piece as being able to scan the horizon, anticipate the impact of disruptive trends and technologies and then build policy and programmes to address them.”

The Future of Work programme focused on making Louisville a regional hub for AI, the Internet of Things and data science, including capitalising on expertise in manufacturing and healthcare and addressing equity by bringing more under-represented communities into the tech industry.

Simrall comments: “We were able to upskill thousands of individuals in our community and we were able to prepare industry to think about the impact of AI on their business practices – not to just let it disrupt their business entirely and destroy jobs, but to think through how to replace tasks and how to redefine what work looks like.”

Simrall now feels vindicated in taking an early look at these topics given what has happened since, such as the pandemic and the advent of advanced AI tools such as ChatGPT.

She says elements of the Future of Work programme will live on through non-profit initiatives. Another output was an AI strategy for the city that helps to set policy for the next administration.

It is unclear whether Simrall will be replaced or whether the role will take a new direction. The Mayor’s Office in Louisville did not respond to a request for comment from Cities Today on this.

Next steps

Simrall is undecided on her next career move. She was inspired by New Zealand’s former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern who recently said she didn’t have enough “gas in the tank” to continue in the role.

“It’s a pretty brave thing to say,” Simrall says. “It isn’t to say that I don’t have gas in the tank, but I do know that I’m deeply tired so it’s time to take a break. I’m not very good at it so I’m trying to learn what it’s like to not be jumping from crisis to crisis or major initiative to major initiative.”

Whatever she decides to do, Simrall says: “I have to feel really worthy about how I am spending my time,” which she did in Louisville.

And wherever she lands should also be large enough to be globally relevant but small enough to allow the agility to get things done. She views this as part of the “secret to our success” in Louisville.

Simrall sees a time of opportunity ahead for innovation in US cities due to historic amounts of funding, particularly through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA).

Cities have a chance not just to scale up existing programmes but to do something entirely new, she says.

Louisville, for example, recently received a US$2 million SMART grant to tackle the long-term and growing challenge related to viaduct flooding and road safety.

However, Simrall also points out that money needn’t be an obstacle to innovation: “I am incredibly proud that over the six-and-a-half years of my tenure, aside from our salaries, we did not receive significant additional funding. Some of our most creative solutions came about because there was no funding. We either had to create these public-private partnerships or we just had to be really creative about solving problems.

“So don’t let the lack of funding stop great ideas.”