From Policy to Data Policy: A Recap of HDC’s 2025 Legislative Tracking
Why Data Policy Matters
Data policy is the rules and guidelines that govern how data is collected, stored, used, shared, and protected. Good data policy helps make information more reliable and secure, while also making it interoperable - exchangeable and useful for developing insights. When organizations have clear standards that result in reliable, shareable, and useful data, silos often break down and ultimately these organizations and the customers or communities they serve receive better service and solutions.
When data policy is weak, however, gaps, conflicting definitions, or privacy concerns can creep in and erode evidence-based decisions and public trust. For example, a clear framework of statewide standards and sharing protocols—like those introduced by the Chief Data Officer and task force—intends to move data “from silo to solution,” allowing agencies to coordinate services, cut duplication, and ground decisions in evidence rather than intuition.
Session Snapshot
Zooming out, political policy is important for impacting government data policy and how data is used to guide decision making. Accordingly, we tracked bills directly related to data and household need in the 2025 legislative session. We also looked for bills that created new services, or supported existing services, that might benefit from increased data capacity support. During the sixty day session that spanned from January 15th through May 2nd, 3,172 bills worked their way through the House and Senate, of which 322 (10%) were passed and 313 (10%) were signed into law. Among those, we followed 133 bills we identified as data-relevant, of which 17 remained after second cross-over and four became law.
What Advanced and What Stalled
The following data and household assistance-related bills passed during the 2025 Legislative Session:
Relating to Data
SB742 (Act 154) Relating to Data Sharing: Establishes a Data Sharing and Governance Working group within the Office of Enterprise Technology Services. Among the many responsibilities of the working group, it shall recommend an ongoing data-sharing governance structure that identifies a centralized coordinating agency to ensure effective cross-agency direction, collaboration and accountability.
SB 1491 (Act 221) Relating to Departmental Data Sharing: Adds the Departments of Taxation and Business, Economic Development, and Tourism to the list of state agencies required to share data and determine the data to be shared through the Statewide Longitudinal Data System.
Relating to Household Need
HB 1099 (Act 43) Making an Emergency Appropriation to the Department of Human Services: Provides an emergency appropriation for fifty per cent of the penalty assessed by the United States Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service to be reinvested in the continued development of a new eligibility system that will assist in reducing the State's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program payment error rate.
SB 960 (Act 264) Relating to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP): Appropriates funds to the Department of Human Services to enhance access to and participation in SNAP, including establishing additional positions.
In addition to these bills that passed, a permanent full time Data/AI Equity Manager position was added to the budget, within the Office of Enterprise Technology Services, to support the Chief Data Officer. This new position is starting in FY26 and was created as part of the Budget Bill.
Of the remaining 129 bills we tracked that did not pass, we would like to highlight three that we believe are highly relevant and worth revisiting in future sessions:
HB 131 Relating to Research: Allows agencies to disclose government records to researchers for certain research purposes.
HB 726 Relating to a Statewide Data and Artificial Intelligence Governance and Decision Intelligence Center: Establishes and appropriates funds for a data and artificial intelligence governance and decision intelligence center and necessary positions to improve data quality and data sharing statewide.
SB1111 Relating to Agricultural Statistics: Requires the Department of Agriculture to revitalize and enhance the Agricultural Statistics Program to collect data on local agricultural interests and appropriates funds.
Looking Ahead
In our experience partnering with government agencies, and community partners during the wildfire recovery and the pandemic, we have found that government data modernization is not simply held back by a lack of technology, but also the quieter work of addressing people, process, and governance challenges before (and after) new data systems, dashboards, etc. are ever built. We believe that foundational work is best done now, before we find ourselves in the midst of another crisis – such as the ones that could potentially result from federal policy changes. In light of our current reality, resources would be well spent developing thoughtful, comprehensive data policies at the state and local levels that provide essential technical, people, and process support for data modernization so that we are not entirely reliant on federal data and funding structures. Regardless of what happens at the federal level, however, these are sound investments for ensuring our state government is responsive and adaptive to the evolving needs of Hawaiʻi's families and communities.
