Puerto Rico committees hear bill to create single digital record for people with disabilities

A joint public hearing of the House Government Committee and the Commission on Older Adults and Social Welfare on March 27 examined House Bill 387, a gubernatorial-backed measure to create a single centralized digital record for people with disabilities and to order the Puerto Rico Innovation and Technology Service (PRITS) to build, implement and maintain it.

Supporters said the system should reduce repeated paperwork and speed access to services, while agency officials urged clearer regulatory language, firm protections for privacy and time and budget details before the committee moves the bill forward.

Isabel Salgado Pérez, assistant administrator for administration and finance at the Administration for the Care and Integral Development of Childhood (ACUDEN) in the Department of the Family, said ACUDEN serves about 2,095 children in early-childhood programs and that integrating records would “guarantee the continuity and accessibility of information of services provided over time.” She told the committees that ACUDEN’s current platforms already capture items such as the Avanzando Juntos screening documents and individualized education plans and that the agency is available to contribute data and technical help.

Antonio Ramos Guardiola, executive director of PRITS, said PRITS has begun a discovery phase to catalog which systems hold what data, identify duplications and determine “where the government first sees a datum” so agencies can design workflows to share records. Ramos said PRITS expects to follow industry cybersecurity standards (NIST, ISO 27001) and…