New startup regulator in SF

San Francisco will create an Office of Emerging Technology, where tech companies can pitch their services so The City will no longer be taken by surprise and have to scramble to address impacts of the businesses.

In recent years, San Francisco has struggled to keep up with tech companies and their new gadgets that often exploit gray areas in the laws that hadn’t contemplated things like robots using sidewalks to make deliveries or an overnight explosion of rentable e-scooters over cell phone applications.

The legislation to create the office was introduced Tuesday by Board of Supervisors President Norman Yee with the support of City Administrator Naomi Kelly. Public Works would house the new office, and there is $250,000 in the current fiscal year’s budget to fund the effort.

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