Hawaii DCIO on open data, citizen engagement

Randy Baldemor, deputy chief information officer for Hawaii, discusses open data, open source, citizen user experience and social media in this interview with StateScoopTV.

Below are edited highlights.

“The state of Hawaii and its governor have prioritized actually transforming government, improving government operations and engagement with the community. An important aspect of that is transparency, making more information available to our citizens. Obviously, through open government initiatives we can do that. There are a number of things we are doing: first off, we are modernizing our websites, making those more accessible to the community – making them more intuitive, so people are more comfortable going to those websites. We are definitely putting more information on those websites about government. We are trying to increase services that are available to the community on those websites also.”

“We’re enhancing our websites to provide data out to the community. We have a platform – data.hawaii.gov – where basically the various departments can provide data sets on that platform. Anyone in the community can go to that site and be able to mashup the data and utilize it in different ways. Recently there was a bill passed – HB632 – that’s basically an open government bill to promote data sharing across the agencies and to further enhance the CIO’s role in helping facilitate that. It’s very much a multi-faceted strategy, looking at many different ways of making data available to the community, but also enhancing and promoting collaboration across the platform.”

“We’re certainly using open source tools and using open platforms. One of the important things is making sure our websites and data are accessible. We’re also putting a lot of work into the design of the websites we are creating. We want that design to be responsive design. We want it to be accessible in different ways. It’s not just going online, but mobile platforms and making these sites usable in those platforms.”

“That’s something that is an ongoing effort. It’s an experiment. You continue to try different things that are out there, whether it’s Facebook or Twitter, and different mechanisms to see how you can get information out. We’ve done some things in terms of releasing information on a Facebook page where we share the things we’re doing to increase the following of the work that we’re doing. We’re certainly exploring other ways.”