The federal government plans to have administrative rules in place by April to help clarify its oversight role of the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, a top Obama administration official said Tuesday.

If adopted, the rules would be the first established since the law creating the Hawaiian home lands trust was enacted by Congress and signed by President Warren G. Harding nearly a century ago.

Rhea Suh, the U.S. Department of the Interior’s assistant secretary for policy, management and budget, told those attending the opening day of the 12th Annual Native Hawaiian Convention in Honolulu that the agency recognizes its oversight role has not always been consistent and that it has not always had a very visible presence in the islands.

Suh noted the unusual role the Interior Department has in Hawaii compared with its oversight involving other indigenous communities.

Elsewhere, the Interior Department handles everything in-house, but in Hawaii, the agency has an oversight role over the federally created trust while the state manages it, Suh told the convention audience.

The state took on that management responsibility as a condition of statehood.

“That bifurcation can create some ambiguity and confusion,” Suh said.

“We clearly need to find ways to clarify our roles and responsibilities,” she added, urging the audience to hold both governments accountable.

The Interior Department anticipates publishing, in October, draft rules that will be up for public comment. The final rules are expected to be in place by late March of April, according to Suh.

The rules will focus on two areas:

>> The process for amending the law, which was enacted in 1921 and created the 203,000-acre trust to provide homestead leases to those with at least 50 percent Hawaiian blood.

>> Approving land exchanges involving trust property.

The Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement, which organized the three-day convention, which ends Thursday, has made federal rule-making a top priority for several years.

Advocates say federal rules are needed to provide more clarity for enforcing the law and to better hold the state accountable for its trust obligations.

The state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, which has a checkered history in managing the trust, has been discussing the rule-making with Interior Department officials.

Suh cautioned not to expect too much from the new regulations.

“No single rule coming from Washington will solve all the problems of the beneficiary communities,” she said. “But they are concrete steps that we can and that we should and that we will take on behalf of the Native Hawaiian community.”

The Interior Department currently does not have plans to propose more rules once the first ones are in place, Suh told the Star-Advertiser after her luncheon speech.

But she said the department wants to see how this rule-making process goes.

Suh’s boss, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, is scheduled to address the convention today.

Jewell will be the first Interior secretary to come to Hawaii to meet with Native Hawaiians in more than 40 years, according to the department.