Bigger government isn’t always better? Competition is good? What interesting concepts!

If you’ve heard of California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, there’s a good chance that the context involves his vocal support for gay marriage during his days as San Francisco’s mayor. But whatever your take on that subject, you’ll likely find some interest in topics Newsom discussed recently with Fortune magazine, including the “never enough” approach to government and the value of disruptive innovation.

ADAM LASHINSKY: Not just a Democrat, but on some of the policy issues that you’ve been associated with over your career — gay marriage being the most prominent — you have nothing in common with the Republicans, and yet there’s a real kinship between what you’re saying here and what Newt Gingrich is saying.

GAVIN NEWSOM: Yeah, it’s interesting. You know, and Newt has actually reached out directly and we’ve had some interesting email exchanges on this. I joked with him, I said, ‘When you said something complimentary, I had to reread my book.’ It’s like, wait a sec. Oh, what have I done?

But, no, I admire at least the 21st century thinking. And the bottom line is technology is a platform for engagement. Steve Jobs, and you, of course, the living expert in understanding this, created that platform of engagement with private sector partners. Millions of people were able to partner with Apple and of course hundreds and hundreds of thousands of apps were designed and created because of that partnership. How can government think the same? How can we operate more as a convener, as a collaborator or coordinator, as a cultivator of ideas, as opposed to deliver those apps in every case. As a Democrat, that’s difficult because I’m so used to this idea that more is always better, that if you have a problem, we just need more of government, we need more money. And now I’m convinced that better is better, and we need to find a different relationship.

ADAM LASHINSKY: And in your book you have specific examples of how the government could do a better job using digital technology. For example, you’d like government at all levels to emulate what Yelp has done with restaurants…

GAVIN NEWSOM: Well, I love competition. You know, I come from the private sector. I have 17 small businesses, about 1,000 employees. And I honestly say that not to impress, but to impress upon you a mindset of entrepreneurialism in the context of competition. I’m forced to be entrepreneurial. I’m forced to be adaptive and nimble and flexible in my rule-making within my organization because of the nature of a competitive environment. In government, we’re not.

But what I argue for in this book is more openness and transparency, and that Yelp-like transparency creates an openness and engagement, where the rating system — And I’m in the restaurant business, and when Yelp came along, it was disruptive. All of a sudden now we have citizen Yelpers, not just the expert critics, and all of a sudden we’re getting hit on all different sides and supported on all different sides. And so as a consequence, we had to get better because we’re naked. We’re more transparent. We’re living now in a glass neighborhood, in a world where technology is opening up everything. And so taking that framework of engagement so that we can begin to rate our DMV services compared to your DMV services in your neighborhood, or rate the interaction at the Recreation and Parks Department with your interaction, we’re able to compare and contrast and measure our efficacy in a way that I think will only elevate the quality of service. [Emphasis added.]