ETS presents user-focused plan for statewide open data portal

Rebecca, the chief data officer for Enterprise Technology Services (ETS), said the office is pushing to make Hawaii's open data portal more user-centered, arguing the current portal is researcher-focused despite "over 1000 of datasets." Rebecca said a central, citizen-facing site would help newcomers, parents, students and commuters find education, safety and other local information now scattered across department sites.

Shelby Albertson, a business data analyst for ETS, told Hack24 participants to design the portal from users' perspectives and to build intuitive navigation, personas and measurable features. "When you're designing it, you know, pull those UI, UX design skills in, make it intuitive design," Shelby said, urging teams to include interactive visualizations and to consider both front-end user experience and back-end analytics so departments can track engagement.

Shelby suggested adding AI-driven capabilities such as persona-based recommendations and generative search to surface relevant datasets for people who do not know how to read raw CSVs. "Maybe recommendations based off a person's persona," she said. ETS also offered technical resources: attendees were told APIs and downloadable datasets are available on the open data portal and department websites.

Rebecca said state departments vary in how citizen-facing their data is and noted there are 18 state departments publishing open data. She emphasized accessibility across education and language levels, citing a local education figure: "We're 37% last year," she said, while acknowledging national averages near 30%.

There were no formal votes or policy decisions recorded; the session ended with organizers inviting participants to a Slack channel for follow-up questions and thanking attendees for participating in the Hack24 challenge. An unidentified participant praised the appointment of a chief data officer for ETS.