IT Steering Committee approves strategic plan


Jul 15, 2019

By Transform Hawai‘i Government

The Ige Administration has a significant head start on its IT strategic planning. Members of the State of Hawaii IT Steering Committee approved the state’s updated IT Strategic Plan on April 25. This puts the administration more than a year ahead of the requirement to deliver an updated plan to the Legislature, as required by Act 238. The plan is available here.
 
THG chose to invest in the development of the state IT Strategic Plan because it helps chart the course for the coordination of IT and data, including modernization and optimization, across all state agencies over several years. The goal is to improve the delivery of information and services to the people and businesses of Hawaii, and to provide leaders and state employees with the modern resources they need to make sound decisions and do their jobs.
 
As many THG coalition members know, working groups were convened consisting of public- and private-sector leaders as well as state employees to refresh and update the plan, which was subsequently delivered to the governor along with other administrative and legislative leadership. 
 
THG wishes to recognize former CIO Todd Nacapuy for starting the process, and new CIO Douglas Murdock and his team at the Office of Enterprise Technology Services for seeing it through. THG also thanks Leslie Mullins of Playbook Consulting for facilitating the working groups.

Data goals and objectives

Completion of the plan also makes progress in fulfilling a request from the Legislature in 2018, via HCR94, for the development of a state IT strategic plan to include data goals and objectives. Legislators acknowledged that many states and municipalities across the nation have adopted open data-driven policies that require government agencies “to collect and publish data, as well as promote data collection and sharing in the private sector, in recognition that access to empirical data is critical to providing decision makers with the information they need to make informed decisions in the interest of citizens.”
 
Legislators also noted that the State of Hawaii, unlike many states and municipalities, does not have a full-time chief data officer, and the state’s data “remains decentralized across the executive branch, limiting the opportunities to integrate systems that would promote the State's data goal.”
 
While other bills to establish a chief data officer and data taskforce did not pass this session, THG remains committed to enhancing data governance. In recognition that accurate, well-managed, and maintained data is essential to providing information to decision-makers, both within and external of government, there has been preliminary but very reassuring indication from ETS that it plans to support data efforts through future legislation or other means. THG will keep the coalition informed of opportunities to lend additional support in this area.