On Politics: Hawaii’s high hopes for high tech not new, as worn as Labor Department’s aging mainframe

Doesn’t it make sense to point out the things you are good at? So why did Gov. David Ige in his seventh State of the State address last week stress Hawaii as a high-tech hub, when at best, the state continues to embrace failed technology and at worse, is more of a digital meltdown than a signpost to a new “innovation economy”?

Back in his first speech to the state in 2015, Ige had to apologize for the state’s technology failure, the Hawaii Health Connector, that was supposed to direct callers to local health insurance plans under the Obamacare rollout. In its first year it enrolled just 2,192 people in health plans, fewer than in any other state. In his speech then, Ige said, “I will not minimize the disappointments we’ve all felt with the Health Connector.”

Just last week, the Ige administration was still apologizing. Honolulu Star- Advertiser Kokua Line columnist Christine Donnelly wrote that “Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC), popularly known as ‘the plus-up,’ is flowing in Hawaii only to recipients of Pandemic Unemployment Assistance at this point, because PUA claims are not processed on Hawaii’s aging mainframe computer, which is so fragile that the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations fears it may crash, DLIR officials said.”

Ige rightly reasoned that “The pandemic also exposed our local economy for what it is: very dependent on tourism. To make the state less vulnerable to sudden and unexpected changes, we must diversify.”

Nothing new about that. Democrats when they became the majority party in 1954 made the same exact pledge: diversify the economy.

“I will continue to promote technology to help diversify our economy,” Ige promised last week.

Putting all your eggs in the high-tech basket also is nothing new. Governors routinely haul out the better-living-in-a digital-future promise. Before Ige, Gov. Neil Abercrombie brought on board Sonny Bhagowalia for the executive role of chief adviser for technology and cyber security.

Bhagowalia is now the acting assistant commissioner for information and technology and chief information officer at Customs and Border Protection. During his three years in Hawaii, Bhagowalia said his mission was to make Hawaii the “technology hub in the Asia-Pacific region.

“We’ve made tremendous progress. I’ve set up a foundation that others can implement. Now we can move forward,” he said in 2014.

Now in 2021 Ige sees Hawaii’s prosperity digitally connected through “the creation of a healthy statewide broadband network.”

Of course we have had a Hawaii Broadband Advisory Council for more than a decade, along with strategic reports, state laws and task forces all saying Hawaii needs to give internet access to underserved areas. So there is little new in Ige’s new call.

Instead, it would have been better if Ige had concentrated on the portions of his speech that did both sing and sting. He was beautifully accurate when he said: “We were at our best when we were looking out for each other — when we didn’t let others, or the times, tear us apart. This is who we are. This is who we’ve always been.”

Unfortunately, he was also frighteningly on target when he said: “For the first time in our state’s history, we borrowed $750 million to help make payroll.”

Keep those two thoughts up front, and the internet and high tech will take care of themselves and naturally fill whatever needs develop.