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Senate committee backs bill to create cross‑agency data‑sharing task force
Summary
The Senate subcommittee advanced legislation to create a state task force to combine agency data for policy and budget decisions, proponents said, to reduce siloed operations and identify funding needs. Committee members sought assurances the work won’t duplicate existing panels.
Senators on the State Agencies & Governmental Affairs subcommittee voted to advance Senate Bill 656, which would create a data‑sharing and data‑driven decisionmaking task force to coordinate information across state agencies.
Senator English introduced the measure and asked Chief Privacy Officer Jennifer Davis to explain the proposal. Davis said the task force’s job would be to “figure out what we need to do to make that happen,” including identifying any funding requirements and reporting back by February on resources needed to combine and analyze agency data.
Director Nunnish told the committee that while a data transparency panel exists under last year’s Act 912, that body is composed of agency members and lacks enforcement authority and dedicated funding. “Each state agency has a small piece of the puzzle,” Nunnish said, arguing the proposed task force would allow the legislature and executive branch to “step back, see the full picture, to be able to better allocate resources.”
Several members pressed for assurances the bill would not duplicate existing efforts. One lawmaker said he worried about creating another layer of bureaucracy if the task force replicated work done by the Office of Information Technology. Senator Hickey asked whether the Legislative Audit or shared services cabinet analyses could be incorporated to avoid overlap; proponents agreed audits should be consulted.
After questions about shared‑service funding and whether any single agency would be required to shoulder disproportionate costs, the committee moved and adopted SB 656 by voice vote.
What happens next: the task force—if the bill becomes law—will inventory agency data, identify funding needs and options, and return recommendations to the legislature in the time frame described in the bill.
