STAND. COM. REP. NO. 2708

Honolulu, Hawaii

RE: S.B. No. 2526

S.D. 1

Honorable Ronald D. Kouchi

President of the Senate

Thirty-Second State Legislature

Regular Session of 2024

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committees on Labor and Technology and Government Operations, to which was referred S.B. No. 2526 entitled:

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY,"

beg leave to report as follows:

The purpose and intent of this measure is to:

(1) Require the Technology Services Consolidation Working Group, established by Act 179, SLH 2022, to:

(a) Assist the Office of Information Technology Services in working with certain state agencies to inventory and categorize the business criticality of each major state information technology systems or data set;

(b) Determine the appropriate data center or hosting facility requirements; and

(c) Report to the Legislature; and

(4) Extend the working group's dissolution date to June 30, 2028.

Your Committees received testimony in support of this measure from the Office of Enterprise Technology Services and Servpac.

Your Committees find that data services are essential to running an effective government as it powers critical services, from tax collection to emergency response, and underpins the very fabric of our society. Safeguarding and ensuring the uninterrupted availability of government information technology is extremely important, and a power outage, a cooling system malfunction, or a network disruption could bring an entire system to a standstill, with negative consequences for the State's citizens and businesses. This measure ensures that the State's data systems and data are housed within facilities with sufficient backups and redundancies to protect this resource.

Your Committees have amended this measure by:

(1) Inserting language requiring the working group to ensure all consolidated state date be housed in a facility with the resiliency to perform maintenance without downtime, as well as having contingencies for power outages and other emergencies;

(2) Changing the sunset date of the working group to June 30, 2026; and

(3) Inserting an effective date of July 1, 2050, to encourage further discussion.

As affirmed by the records of votes of the members of your Committees on Labor and Technology and Government Operations that are attached to this report, your Committees are in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 2526, as amended herein, and recommend that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 2526, S.D. 1, and be referred to your Committee on Ways and Means.

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committees on Labor and Technology and Government Operations,

________________________________ ANGUS L.K. MCKELVEY, Chair

________________________________ HENRY J.C. AQUINO, Chair