Last month, Gov. David Ige traveled to the Big Island to conduct official government business.

But the purpose of the trip or even who the governor met with is secret. The trip wasn’t listed on his public calendar, and when pressed by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser about what he was doing on the island, Ige wouldn’t say.

Ige made open government an important part of his campaign for governor. In fact, it was one of the reasons he said he ran for governor.

“It really is about restoring faith and confidence in government transparency, and it’s about government doing its job,” he told the Molokai Dispatch during his campaign.

But since assuming the governorship 10 months ago, Ige has fallen short on some of his key campaign promises when it comes to government transparency.

>> He promised to hold weekly press conferences, but scuttled the idea during his first weeks in office.

The governor has only held seven press conferences since taking office, according to a review of press releases archived on his website. However, he did hold additional weekly briefings on the homeless issue throughout August.

>> Ige also promised that he would require his department heads to hold at least four community meetings a year, including travel to the neighbor islands. But with less than three months left in the calendar year, he says his office is still working to set those up.

Minus the weekly press conferences and community meetings, it’s not that easy to track what the governor is doing.

His public calendar, which he has decided to only post on his website, as opposed to distributing to the media weekly, as has been the practice of past governors, doesn’t provide much information about his daily activities. The schedule includes mainly ceremonial affairs — groundbreakings for new developments, employee award ceremonies and festivals.

During the first couple weeks of September and again this week, the calendar sometimes showed no events. The governor’s office blamed the empty calendar on a technological glitch.

Political analysts say that overall the governor isn’t meeting expectations about open government.

“There weren’t a whole lot of issues that (Ige) campaigned on other than not being Abercrombie, but transparency was one of them,” said Colin Moore, a University of Hawaii political science professor. “So I’ve been surprised that he hasn’t really fulfilled that pledge.”

Ige acknowledged that some of his promises haven’t come to fruition, but suggested that this is more a facet of logistics than a concerted attempt to keep the media or public at bay.

Weekly press conferences quickly didn’t seem like the best use of time, he said.

It “didn’t seem like having them explicitly weekly made sense from the standpoint that we wouldn’t sometimes have anything to say,” said Ige.

Having all his directors hold separate community meetings could be hard because of their hectic schedules, he said. He’s now looking to host community meetings with several department heads at the same time.

And as far as his calendar, he said it’s not possible to always inform the public about who he is meeting with because of personnel issues.

How much information is divulged to the public about a governor’s daily activities varies greatly among the states, based on a review of other governors’ schedules.

For instance, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s schedule includes information about who the governor is meeting with on a daily basis, including staff, lawmakers and even a scheduled phone call with former Vice President Al Gore.

Perhaps on the other end of the transparency spectrum is Oregon, where Gov. Kate Brown doesn’t release a schedule. The public or media has to file a formal records request if they want her calendar, according to a spokesman for her office.

Ige said that he would consider posting more detailed information on his public schedule about who he is meeting with, but said that often he’s meeting with potential hires, information that needs to be kept private.

In defending his record on transparency, Ige stressed that he allows reporters to ask any questions they want at news conferences, even if it’s off topic, and he’s told his Cabinet that they are expected to communicate with the public and media.

He’s also made it a priority to modernize government information systems so that more data and information is available to the public.

“I think that the biggest challenge is that everyone has a different definition of transparency, and I don’t know if there is uniform consensus on what that means,” said Ige.

Ige is known for his deliberative and thoughtful style of governing. His temperate personality contrasts with past governors such as Abercrombie, who was known for his fiery passion and eagerness to jump into the middle of any fight.

While Ige’s style helped attract voters fatigued with Abercrombie, his technocratic approach to decision-making can clash with open government, said Moore.

“I don’t think this is an administration that is particularly good at responding quickly or responding on the fly,” he said. “And that is something you really have to do if you are going to embrace transparency.”

As protests swirled over Ige’s decision early in his term to nominate Castle & Cooke lobbyist Carleton Ching to lead the Department of Land and Natural Resources, Ige struggled to swiftly respond to the criticism or satisfactorily explain why he chose Ching.

Ige later withdrew the nomination when it looked like Ching didn’t have the votes in the Senate to get confirmed.

The governor’s cool approach to addressing protests of the Thirty Meter Telescope on Mauna Kea also attracted frustration. The New York Times editorial board said Ige needed to step up and be clear about his views on the telescope, as opposed to pushing for more dialogue.

Ige has also been criticized by his own lieutenant governor, Shan Tsutsui, for not being more open about negotiations to privatize Maui hospitals. Tsutsui, however, said that he didn’t think the governor was trying to keep information from the public.

“Internally, when I meet with the governor, I know that he wants to (be transparent). That is just him,” said Tsutsui, who also worked for years with Ige in the Senate. “He’s nothing about secret meetings. That’s never been him and I know that. But I don’t know if (the administration) knows how to do it.”