The institutional bureaucracy hacker & civic systems architect.
I translate high-stakes legislative, fiscal, and policy frameworks into seamless, human-centered civic experiences — rebuilding administrative culture, procurement pathways, and public data systems from the inside out.
Sustainable public-sector innovation can't be achieved just by changing policies or electing new officials. It requires a structural overhaul of administrative culture, procurement pathways, and operational data systems — from the inside out. Across state policy, civic-tech entrepreneurship, and senior municipal administration, that's the single thesis I've been testing for fifteen years.
Complex fiscal & legislative frameworks into human-centered civic UX.
Risk-averse procurement so small, agile teams can build for the city.
Government, capital, academia & community into one working coalition.
“I'm a systems thinker who enjoys bringing people together to improve the end-to-end civic user experience.”— Ash Roughani · on his practice ↗
Three interlocking disciplines — each backed by documented regional work. Click any pillar to open the operating record.
Reframing municipal services, public data, and local budgets as intuitive, end-to-end user interfaces — applying service design, ethnographic research, and agile product management to lower the barrier to citizen engagement.
Open Budget Sacramento cloned the Open Budget Oakland platform with civic developers Donald Brower, Mark A. Matney Jr., and Dan Fey, giving residents a visual tool to comprehend municipal spending. As head of product for Sac2050, I turned passive open data into a goal-oriented regional dashboard. With civic technologist Joel Riphagen, the California Health Data Project explored an interoperable human-services data ecosystem across state and local divisions.
The structural dismantling of risk-averse procurement pipelines and legacy policies that keep good, cheap solutions out of government.
Running the Startup in Residence (STIR) program from the Mayor's Office, I replaced multi-page proposals with a simplified, Screendoor-powered application — letting agile teams bid directly on civic challenges. Instead of buying inflexible software, a four-month residency had startups and city staff co-build, test, and refine MVPs. One resident, Unleash Live, converted its pilot analyzing real-time traffic-camera feeds into a formal municipal contract.
Aligning the divergent motivations of government, private tech, higher education, and community advocates into a single working coalition.
Under Mayor Darrell Steinberg and alongside Chief Innovation Officer Louis Stewart, I helped operate the Sacramento Urban Technology Lab — a "Triple Helix" living lab turning the city into a testing site for autonomous shuttles, cybersecurity, and food systems. I managed the $1M annual grant program funding talent accelerators like Square Root Academy and Lab 7 Coworking.
“We should be releasing everything by default — and not releasing only those data sets we have good reason not to release.”— Government Technology, 2014 · on open data ↗
Three public initiatives, each told as structural problem → operational solution → community impact.
Rigid, multi-page RFP rules created unnecessary barriers for small, localized technology companies — keeping better, cheaper solutions out of City Hall entirely.
I stood up the Startup in Residence program: a simple Screendoor application replaced bulky proposals, and a four-month residency let startups co-build MVPs with city staff rather than buying finished, inflexible software.
The city deployed behavioral-science tools to ease traffic congestion and aggregated EV-charging analytics. Unleash Live transitioned its pilot into a formal municipal contract for real-time vehicle and pedestrian counts — proof the model holds financially.
Source: #InnovateSac ↗For as long as anyone could remember, the City measured effort, not impact — how many calls were answered, permits issued, people served — but far less about whether those activities actually changed residents' lives. There was no performance-management framework to answer the central question: are the things we're doing actually making a difference?
I led a six-month, organization-wide effort to translate City Council's three priorities — Economic Development, Public Safety, and Homelessness — into a coherent strategic-planning framework, and designed SacramentoSTAT, a next-generation performance-management system rooted in the PerformanceStat model: accurate & timely data, regular STAT meetings where department heads answer for results, relentless follow-up, and public-facing transparency dashboards.
The Priorities Strategic Workplan was presented to City Council on May 5, 2026, with a deliberate two-year rollout — piloting with eight priority-aligned departments before scaling citywide — so residents can ultimately see, on public dashboards, whether City services are working.
Source: City of Sacramento staff report ↗Sacramento had open data published all over the place — but no shared infrastructure or community using it strategically to drive civic decisions.
I launched Code for Sacramento and Public Innovation, contributed to Open Budget Sacramento, and co-developed the California Health Data Project — then turned the vision into product with Sac2050's regional indicator dashboard.
A standing community of civic developers, a visual municipal-budget tool residents could actually read, and a recognized regional ecosystem — validation that earned Comstock's top-emerging-leader recognition in 2016.
The $500,000 Creative Economy pilot tested a hypothesis: targeted public micro-investments in arts, culture, and food would catalyze hyper-local activity in underserved neighborhoods. The application data told its own story.
“We have a hypothesis — that these investments will lead to greater economic activity, or social impact on underserved communities.”— Comstock's Magazine, 2018 · on the Creative Economy Fund ↗
Eight principles that govern how I work. Select one to read the philosophy — paired with the record.
Fifteen years, one through-line: making the machinery of government more agile, open, and humane.
Citywide performance measures and federal grants management; lead staffer to the Measure U Community Advisory Commission; led development of the One City, One Future framework and SacramentoSTAT.
Advanced inclusive economic development; ran COVID-19 small-business forgivable loans and Al Fresco dining grants.
Built the Sacramento Urban Technology Lab, ran STIR, and managed multiple grant and opportunity pipelines.
Designed strategies to streamline bureaucratic process in the Mayor's Office for Innovation & Entrepreneurship.
Operationalized the Mayor's Office for Innovation & Entrepreneurship to build the startup pipeline and make City Hall open for business.
Bootstrapped a civic operating system to track regional goals; founded an enterprise SaaS startup for public-sector performance management.
Laid the foundation for Sacramento's civic-innovation and social-entrepreneurship ecosystem.
Advanced statewide governance reform on elections, the budget process, and civic engagement.
Advised executive staff in the Schwarzenegger Administration; led an Executive Order to expand broadband deployment.
The credentials matter less than the candor about them. I'd rather tell you what each chapter actually taught me.
Completed half the program, then resisted the sunk-cost fallacy: the marginal benefit of finishing wouldn't exceed the marginal cost.
Master of Public Policy & Administration. Specialized in political reform in advanced democracies.
Where I learned how to think.
Where I navigated getting out of being lost in life.