Column: Fully charge Hawaii’s digital dashboard

Is government slow at applying technology to make our lives better? A McKinsey & Company global survey reported that digital government transformation fails at a rate of more than 70%.

Here in Hawaii we have HITSP (pronounced “hit-spee”), meaning the Hawaii Information Technology Strategic Plan. Before your eyes glaze over from what may sound like inside-government jargon, let’s look at why it matters to you.

When a bridge collapses somewhere in the world, images of dilapidated concrete and iron fill newspapers and smart phone screens. Now imagine the infrastructure you can’t see. Imagine invisible cloud computing above and fiber optic cables buried below that are improving the hassle-factor when using government services.

State Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz well summarized what it’s all about: “… saving citizens time and money by providing more efficient and proactive services.”

In a nutshell, HITSP is a roadmap guiding us to a mid-21st century world where file folders in clunky metal cabinets are replaced by point-and-click ease. Think of it as an evolution from Steno pad to iPad.

Transform Hawaii Government (THG), a small local nonprofit, with help from many strategic partners, exists to catalyze that change. That’s why THG and tech-minded advocates worked hard with local visionaries to set in motion a chain reaction we hope will ripple across government to enable people, communities and businesses to thrive.

With the stroke of a pen, HITSP became law last April asserting that the “plan (is) vital both to stay current with constantly evolving technology and to fully maximize available modern resources for increased effectiveness, efficiency, and transparency in state government.” The dried ink on Act 238 marked a high-water mark in our movement, but it’s still early days and we’re in it for the long haul.

Business guru Peter Drucker famously said, “What gets measured, gets managed.” To that end, Doug Murdock, the state’s chief information officer and former comptroller, recently released Hawaii’s executive branch’s annual progress report on IT to the Legislature. On the whole, it’s a mixed bag with some noteworthy nuggets of progress in it.

It may surprise you that some government employees still get paper paychecks. That’s changing fast. State government now deposits payroll directly into the bank accounts of over 70,000 workers. Considering civil service makes up the largest employment base on the islands, there are a lot of beneficiaries.

Have you been on the ehawaii.gov portal lately to look up “carpool matching,” or see where the closest farmers’ market is to you? (There are 230 farmers’ markets across the state, apparently.) For its innovative design, the citizen-facing website won a 2019 Davey Silver award.

So what’s next? The state is refurbishing IT systems for things such as disability compensation, KEIKI child support system, procurement and vital records management into the year 2021 and beyond.

Clearly, there’s forward momentum — but we’re left wanting more details and metrics that reflect accountability toward outcomes. Questions loom like what specifically is on the horizon for major systems modernization, how much tax money can be saved, and most importantly, how can government employees and concerned citizens give more input into the process?

Stay plugged in as we work together to gauge and energize this transformation.

Christine Sakuda is executive director of the nonprofit Transform Hawaii Government, and is a member of the state’s Information Technology Steering Committee.