Hawaii’s new CIO shares her first four priorities 

Hawaii’s new chief information officer, Christine Sakuda, started last week, taking over from Doug Murdock, who departed the CIO position last month after four years.

Sakuda, who spent the past seven years as executive director of Transform Hawaii Government, a nonprofit that advocates for the improvement of technology in Hawaii’s state agencies, told StateScoop in a brief email that she has four key priorities in her early days as CIO.

The first priority, she said, is to meet all 140 employees of the Office of Enterprise Technology Services that she now leads. 

“I plan to meet and talk with all of them,” she wrote.

The second priority she named is to delve into the technology agency’s budget to understand its key projects.

Murdock, Hawaii’s former CIO, supported efforts to advance IT consolidation efforts and the state’s use of data. He also played a role in launching the state’s digital credential for COVID-19 vaccination, a component of the tourism-heavy state’s “Safe Travels” program under former Gov. David Ige.

Sakuda said her third priority is to “clearly understand the state priorities” of Gov. Josh Green, his Cabinet, and the state legislature, and to understand how her agency supports those priorities.

Green last month hosted 16 bill-signing ceremonies, pomp underscoring 253 new laws. In a press release, he named balancing the state’s budget and reforming Hawaii’s tax system as being among the “incredible successes” of the recent legislative session.

Sakuda’s fourth priority is to update Hawaii’s IT strategic plan, the document outlining the state’s broad strategy for using technology in the coming years. A 2019 IT strategic plan hosted on the Office of Enterprise Technology Services’ website names priorities like “partner for successful outcomes” and “extend IT portfolio governance.” 

The plan also includes a dab of Hawaiian culture, naming core values such as “Aloha,” or “We treat everyone with dignity, respect, and kindness, reflecting our belief that people are our greatest source of strength,” and “Ho‘okumu,” or “We continually seek new and innovative ways to accomplish our work and commit to finding creative solutions to the critical issues facing this state.”