STAND. COM. REP. NO. 1571

Honolulu, Hawaii

RE: S.C.R. No. 135

S.D. 1

Honorable Ronald D. Kouchi

President of the Senate

Thirty-Third State Legislature

Regular Session of 2025

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Government Operations, to which was referred S.C.R. No. 135 entitled:

"SENATE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION URGING ALL STATE DEPARTMENTS TO PARTNER WITH THE OFFICE OF WELLNESS AND RESILIENCE FOR DATA SHARING AGREEMENTS,"

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose and intent of this measure is to urge all state departments to partner with the Office of Wellness and Resilience for data sharing agreements.

Your Committee received testimony in support of this measure from the Department of Health, Senior Advisor for Mental Health and the Justice System, Office of Wellness and Resilience, Office of Enterprise Technology Services, Hawaiʻi Youth Services Network, and one individual.

Your Committee finds that the Office of Wellness and Resilience was established to support and implement a statewide trauma-informed care framework by addressing the various barriers that impact the physical, social, and emotional well-being of all people in the State; building wellness and resilience through trauma-informed, strengths-based strategies; and supporting agencies in their efforts to address trauma-informed care and move toward a collaborative, shared purpose of collective system reform. In December 2024, the Office of Wellness and Resilience launched the Quality of Life and Well-Being Dashboard to fulfill one of its statutory mandates to create a social determinants of health electronic dashboard that identifies a baseline of needs and concerns that impede high quality-of-life outcomes. The dashboard represents the largest survey of health and well-being in the State to date and will allow the Office of Wellness and Resilience to examine community needs through a data-driven lens, leading to the development of effective, evidence-based, and trauma-informed strategies. Your Committee finds, however, that many state datasets remain siloed within individual departments using different data collection methodologies, making it difficult for the Office of Wellness and Resilience to navigate and perform cross-departmental analyses. This measure will facilitate data-sharing between the Office of Wellness and Resilience and state departments, allowing the Office to integrate data from multiple sources and provide community members and policymakers with a comprehensive understanding of community challenges that would not be apparent when data is analyzed in isolation.

Your Committee acknowledges the concerns raised in testimony that the breadth of this measure and its lack of specificity may lead to privacy risks, harm consumers, and overburden state departments unequipped with sufficient infrastructure to securely and efficiently participate in data sharing. Therefore, this measure needs to be amended to address these issues by establishing a balance between data accessibility for improved public services and safeguarding privacy protections.

Accordingly, your Committee has amended this measure by:

(1) Specifying that state departments are urged to partner with the Office of Wellness and Resilience for secure and appropriate data sharing agreements that protect the privacy and confidentiality of residents;

(2) Inserting language urging the Office of Wellness and Resilience to adhere to strict data governance protocols while partnering with state departments to seek deidentified, aggregated, anonymized data to protect individual privacy while effectively addressing community needs;

(3) Inserting language clarifying legislative intent;

(4) Amending its title accordingly; and

(5) Making technical, nonsubstantive amendments for the purposes of clarity and consistency.

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Government Operations that is attached to this report, your Committee concurs with the intent and purpose of S.C.R. No. 135, as amended herein, and recommends its adoption in the form attached hereto as S.C.R. No. 135, S.D. 1.

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committee on Government Operations,

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ANGUS L.K. MCKELVEY, Chair