Blogging the Aloha State and Beyond
UH journalism professor Gerald Kato recently dug up this old video that SHOPO, the Honolulu police officers’ union, made in 1995 during the fight over the Uniform Information Practices Act (UIPA), or HRS 92F,...
Capping off a historic year of government transformation and grassroots innovation, the first HON*CELERATOR competition aims to inspire the best apps and online tools that use open data to improve the day-to-day lives of...
Last year, Hawaii-based consulting engineering firm Oceanit showed off an iPhone app that it had developed to help Hawaii State Civil Defense speed up disaster documentation. Dubbed MERCI, or Mobile Emergency Response and Command Interface,...
The new Data.Honolulu.gov site takes the city’s transparency efforts “to the next level,” expanding upon the “CAN-DO” portal it unveiled last March.
Honolulu Mayor Peter Carlisle has directed all city department and agency heads to support its open data initatives. And now, Honolulu’s engagement with the national “Code For America” program has now brought three new web apps for citizens.
On Friday, State CIO Sanjeev “Sonny” Bhagowalia and the Office of the Governor called together several community stakeholders to update them on their ongoing initiative to transform government. The presentation came just as the...
On Wednesday, the first local meetup of the Sunlight Foundation community will be held at Yogur Story . Pulled together by  Burt Lum, my fellow open government advocate and long-time partner in geekery, the gathering...
On the national front, we had the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA), beaten back by a massive groundswell of opposition from major internet firms and grassroots geeks alike. Here in Hawaii, a proposed law...
A total of six teams participated in Honolulu’s first civic hackathon this past weekend, each developing anapplication that takes advantage of public data made available online by the city. The top three teams won...
Gov. Neil Abercrombie yesterday delivered his second “State of the State” address before the Legislature. And technology was one of the priorities he singled out as key to the state’s long-term future. He mentioned the...
This year is looking to be a big year in open data, e-democracy, and Gov 2.0. More information is coming online, and more people are thinking of ways to use it. Among the most interesting areas is in mapping and location-based applications.
Nearly 150 people — including both city and state government officials and employees, as well as local programmers, designers, artists, and activists — were drawn to CityCamp Honolulu on Saturday. Even though it was the weekend,...
After nearly two years of planning and preparations, APEC is finally landing in Honolulu. This week’s events brings government leaders from around the world (including Punahou grad and U.S. President Barack Obama) to the...
A federal program to train government employees, first responders, and other disaster response personnel in the use of services like Twitter and Facebook got its first trial run yesterday. The Hawaii-based National Disaster Preparedness...
As an advocate for free access to government data, I was glad to hear about the City and County of Honolulu’s newly launched online transparency initiative, “Citizens Analyzing Numbers Discover Opportunity” (or CAN-DO). Indeed,...
The House Judiciary Committee today unanimously voted to advance a bill that would remove the sunset provision in Hawaii’s so-called “Journalist Shield Law,” otherwise known as Act 210 (HB2557) from the 2008 Legislative session....
Today, Honolulu Civil Beat continued its coverage of government transparency and public worker salaries with its latest data set: employees of the City & County of Honolulu. As in the past, the data isn’t entirely...
Local news startup Civil Beat today posted a piece on the names and salaries of state House and Senate members and staff. As before, they posted a watermarked PDF on Slideshare with the download...
“State highway conditions are the best they’ve been in 19 years,” proclaims the Reason Foundation in its 19th Annual Highway Report. Unfortunately, the Aloha State was ranked 47th overall, ahead of only California, Alaska,...
I had a nice conversation this afternoon with Marie Laderta, director of the state Department of Human Resources Development, in response to my request to secure the same data her office prepared for Civil...
What I’m Reading
Hawaii Hui
