It would be hard for Honolulu to do any worse when it comes to managing and using city data. That was the assessment Kira Chuchom, the city’s first-ever chief data officer, made in a blunt 2025 report on the city’s shortcomings and possible solutions.  

Now, voters are being asked if they want to make the position a permanent part of the City Charter, while also creating an Office of Innovation and Technology tasked with making data a bigger and more integrated part of how government operates. 

Thomas Lee, the director of government partnerships at Hawaiʻi Data Collaborative, submitted the charter amendment proposal as part of Honolulu’s once a decade process for amending the city’s foundational governing document. Out of almost 300 proposals submitted, it is one of 20 that survived months of discussion by a small group of volunteers who approved it for the general election ballot.

“Data sharing, data utilization, data security, data privacy, data accuracy – all those things that are covered with the role of the chief data officer – we should take this opportunity to enshrine it in charter to ensure that this supersedes any change in City Council or mayoral administration,” Lee said in an interview.

Substandard Data Practices

The role of chief data officer came about in 2022. It differs from the director of the Department of Information Technology, Lee said, in that the IT director focuses more on engineering while the chief data officer focuses on coming up with uses for data. The two positions work together closely. 

In his bill creating the position, Council Chair Tommy Waters referenced numerous audits over the years that criticized city departments for inadequate data collection and reporting. 

He also pointed to the American Rescue Plan, a massive windfall of federal pandemic money from the year before that would require “sophisticated data management to identify community needs, ensure equitable outcomes, and provide current and accurate reports of program outcomes.”

The bill passed unanimously. A year and a half later, Chuchom came aboard as the city’s first chief data officer, and in her data plan published in spring 2025, she assessed the city’s data maturity level at Level 1 out of 5 – “Initial Chaotic.” (Level 0 is the lowest level.)

The city often doesn’t use data to its fullest potential, Chuchom says in the plan, treating it as information to be reported rather than as a trove of potential citywide insights. The city also has a habit of outsourcing data analytics to consultants rather than trying to understand it in-house, she says, and it lacks a deep pool of experienced data professionals. Additionally, the city often neglects to share or integrate data between different departments.

“This must change,” she says in bolded red underlined text. 

Public Databases

Given the city’s relatively unsophisticated data practices, Lee said, it might take a while before Chuchom and her team can deliver the full results he thinks they can.

“It’s a very exponential curve,” he said, adding that it could take a while for residents to see external results such as a massive library of comprehensive and current public databases. 

Only one dataset – related to building permits – currently exists under the City Services tab on the city’s Open Data homepage, for example. And dashboards are not always up to date. One set labeled Bus Routes was last updated over a decade ago in 2015, the webpage says; another, listing bike rack locations, was last updated in 2012. 

Few people testified on the proposed amendment. One of the few, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, said in written testimony that it supports the proposal but would like to see language added to require community engagement on how data is collected and used.

“Part of data governance is ensuring that state and county agencies are equipped with the expertise, cultural competency, and legal grounding necessary for informed decisions,” the office said. “Native Hawaiian data governance for beneficiaries also includes how stories are collected, shared, disaggregated, and governed.”

OHA’s proposed language about community engagement was not included in the final approved question.

The proposal calls for actions such as creating a city data plan, coordinating with departments to help them analyze data and reviewing artificial intelligence use.

Chuchom said in written testimony she and her team are already working toward many changes listed in the proposal. Among other achievements, she said, the team has helped develop a homelessness data dashboard that shows which facilities have capacity to take in more people and is working to publish a dataset of all city-owned property, which currently exists across a variety of sources. 

An artificial intelligence working group Chuchom led has also come up with a citywide AI governance policy, city spokesperson Scott Humber said in an email. The policy has gone through multiple rounds of review and is currently awaiting input from city employee unions. Chuchom was not available for an interview.

Some city agencies, such as the Department of Planning and Permitting and the Department of Community Services, use artificial intelligence already, though Humber told Civil Beat last year that there’s not an exhaustive catalogue of every way employees use AI. 

As the technology continues to advance faster and faster, AI executives have recently taken the unusual step of calling for more pacing and government regulation on their products. Several proposals to limit or make city AI use more transparent, however, did not advance to the ballot for Honolulu voters. Lee said he envisions his proposed Office of Data and Innovation as well as the chief data officer taking on the kuleana of responsible AI use. 

Council spokesperson Taylor Ursulum said in an email that Waters, the chair, was not available for an interview. Aron Dote, another spokesperson, said in a written statement that the council supports the proposal, which he said builds on the ordinance from 2022 to create a framework for responsible AI use and protecting people’s privacy.

“As technology changes,” he wrote, “we must ensure our government keeps pace and uses these tools to deliver better decisions and stronger public service.”

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misspelled Taylor Ursulum’s name.