Stay focused on state IT upgrade

Hawaii officials need to keep their eyes on the prize — moving the state technologically into the 21st century — even if the timetable for making that shift has to be prolonged to make it more affordable and workable.

State government here is equipped with information technology that is decades behind where it needs to be. Experts hired to confront the problem refer delicately to "legacy systems," which is a polite way to describe data management that relies on very old computer networks, barely being kept functional and requiring paper files as well.

This has produced enormous operational inefficiencies that have cost the public dearly in lost service time, labor and transparency. It’s much harder for agencies to deliver records and information filed on index cards or paper forms. Conversely, when good-government advocates come calling, it’s much easier to beg off turning over records when the pertinent data sits in some cabinet drawer.

That was the impetus behind the push for IT "transformation" planning at the outset of then-Gov. Neil Abercrombie’s administration. Ultimately, that initiative, with costs including an $11 million investment developing a request for proposals to do the work, stalled last month when newly inaugurated Gov. David Ige decided to pull the plug on expensive implementation in favor of a more piecemeal approach.

The decision was disappointing, albeit a rational one, in keeping with Ige’s campaign messaging. Ige had said structural and staffing reforms were essential to new technology adoption. Job definitions needed changing, for example, to create positions with the breadth of responsibilities and skills to handle the work.

And, of course, a reality check confirms that in an era when budgets are strained for education and other needs, the state lacks the resources to underwrite the upgrades as quickly as hoped. The state’s first chief information officer, Sonny Bhagowalia, envisioned a 12-year plan that cost $1 billion.

But here’s another reality check: While Hawaii can afford only the most gradual transformation in technology, nothing short of a transformation is required.

There may be some within the state bureaucracy who are sighing with relief that no big changes are imminent. But elsewhere, there’s acute disappointment that the large-scale upgrade blueprint, known as the Statewide Unified Resource Framework (SURF), was put to one side.

Among them are top administrators of the state Department of Education, who had been counting on SURF to usher in a new system to replace the vintage mainframe computer, dating to the 1980s, still handling DOE’s payroll.

"We were looking at being one of the first ones up on that," Superintendent of Education Kathryn Matayoshi told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser editorial board in a recent meeting. "We just have this really old system that essentially requires us to do so many things manually, and we’ve got lots of employees."

The level of commitment to an overhaul, as well as the precarious condition of its existing system, ought to keep DOE upgrades near the top of the priority list, going forward. Many of the efficiency and program improvements needed in public education will rely on technology, and it’s high time to start.

In abandoning SURF, the state Office of Information Management and Technology officials said the $11 million in planning for the bid solicitation will still guide the smaller-scale projects that can be pursued first. That’s critical: Even if the state now prefers to bite off smaller projects, it still must proceed with the grand-plan goals in mind, rather than making quick, short-term patches.

Further, state leaders must find ways to bring Hawaii’s labor force into the current century as well, enabling greater flexibility in work rules and job descriptions that now pose such an impediment to modernization. Whether this happens through civil service reforms or collective bargaining negotiations, the bottom line is that government must become more responsive to the ever-changing world in which it works.