Committee approves data-sharing working group, flags $2.6M request for future review

The Senate Committee on Labor and Technology voted Jan. 29 to pass Senate Bill 742, which would establish a data-sharing and governance working group within the Office of Enterprise Technology Services (OETS) and appropriate funds to support data governance work.

Justine Sakuda, chief information officer for Enterprise Technology Services, told the committee data sharing and governance are priorities and outlined an initial cost estimate and staffing plan. "We have started working through our chief data officer and data task force to really develop data sharing agreements and also data sharing guidance and AI guidance," Sakuda said. She provided an estimated total cost and a staffing request that included funding for six FTEs and consulting support for implementation.

Rebecca Kai, identified as the chief data officer, described roles the requested positions would fill: a data privacy analyst, a data quality specialist, a data scientist, a data architect, a master data person and an open data analyst. Sakuda told the committee the CIO's estimate was "a total of 2,640,000." The committee later recorded a budgetary request of approximately $2,600,000 in the committee report for further consideration.

Advocacy and research groups including Hawaii Kids Can, Hawaii P-20 Partnerships for Education, Hawaii Primary Care Association and others testified in support. DLIR offered comments and said it would participate in the working group.

The committee adopted technical edits, set a defective date of July 1, 2050 to allow further review, and said the committee report would include the CIO's budget requests. The recommendation to pass SB 742 with amendments was adopted; Senators Ihara and Moriwaki were recorded as excused.