During her tenure as an elected official, she has been a key proponent of telecommunications and information policy legislation and organized many legislative access projects. Through the efforts of Sen Fukunaga and others, Hawaii became the first state with a statewide information network.
Sen Fukunaga chaired the National Conference of State Legislatures' State/Federal Assembly Communications Committee this past year, and is a member of the National Information Infrastructure Advisory Council. She was interviewed by GT Editor Wayne Hanson.
GT: How did you first get into politics?
Fukunaga: I ran for office after a constitutional convention in Hawaii 14 years ago. A number of years later John Waihee - our current governor - ran for lieutenant governor and after he was elected lieutenant governor, I moved over from the Legislature to the executive branch and helped organize his office.
GT: As an elected official, how did you get interested in information technology.
Fukunaga: In the legislative branch you always believe that the executive branch is hiding information from you. You wonder why it takes so long to get the information you requested. When you sit on the budget committee, the staff and members ask for information and usually it takes weeks before you get it. In 1983, when I got to the executive branch I discovered why.
We had to provide budget information to all these committees on short order. And we only had typewriters and adding machines.
That was the year the IBM PC was introduced and Lotus 1-2-3 was the first "big" application. We went out and bought a PC and Lotus 1-2-3 for the lieutenant governor's office, and they were such remarkable time savers that we took off trying to automate all the election functions.
After that initial exposure to Lotus 1-2-3, we set up internal PC networks - all the typical things people go through in that first round of learning how to use technology.
After [Waihee] ran for governor and was elected, I returned to the Legislature and my first task was to see how we could automate the Legislature.
GT: When was that?
Fukunaga: 1987 to 1989. Up to that point, most vendors used to approach the Legislature from the standpoint of doing bill drafting as one application. They would approach other things - like bill status - from another perspective. Everything was being done separately. We came across an integrated software system where you entered data once and it could be used for multiple functions. That was the beginning of our automation.
GT: Did it make much of a difference?
Fukunaga: I couldn't even begin to tell you what a difference it made as far as budget testimony and the ease at which we could then do projections, calculations. It's a matter of night and day.
GT: It seems that Hawaii was on the forefront of public access to government information. How did that come about?
Fukunaga: As we automated our own operations, we also passed a number of initiatives promoting high technology as an economic development tool for the state of Hawaii. We passed a law creating Hawaii Inc. in 1988 when we were convinced that the Mini-Tel model [French system where videotex terminals are installed in homes instead of telephone books] was really the wave of the future. So we set up Hawaii Inc. and established "Hawaii FYI" to really take advantage of the state government's network as a way to create critical mass and a larger user base.
At the same time, the Legislature was facing major problems with a lot of its public access and session activities. As a result of the establishment of FYI, we became Hawaii's first information provider by saying, "Why don't we put our money where our mouth is and actually see what it will take to put our data online and become one of the first government information providers?"
With ACCESS [Hawaii's legislative database], we were able to allow people instantaneous access to information that previously had only been available after you faxed something or after you shipped information - like hard copies of bills - to Maui and other libraries across the state.
GT: You're obviously sold on technology - do you have PCs on every table in your home?
Fukunaga: No, but I do use a Macintosh Powerbook. I used to have one of the early Compaq portables. At that time I thought it was wonderful but it probably weighed about 30 pounds. And now I would not dream of carrying anything heavier than four pounds.
GT: You are an elected official that understands and uses technology, but it seems that's the exception rather than the rule. What's it going to take to educate elected officials about IT?
Fukunaga: Part of what we have to do is take better advantage of the resource people we have in state government. Legislators under term limits will probably be turning over a lot more rapidly and you'll have people serving shorter terms, and not developing as much expertise and familiarity with state government. So I think elected officials are going to have to develop better working relationships with technology professionals.
As younger legislators are elected, they are more likely to be familiar with and feel comfortable with using laptops, using telecommunication, faxes, modems, Internet, and the different services that are available today. I hope the work that we've done over the last five or six years will begin to pay off as you begin to develop more and more of a core group of people who have done some work in technology or who are comfortable with it.
GT: Just how important is information technology to state and local government?
Information technology is going to determine whether business comes to your state or doesn't. It will determine whether state and local governments are going to be able to provide services - like welfare benefits, health care and distance learning - effectively. We can no longer expect to deliver government services the same old way we've done for the last 20 years. The world has changed. Information and communication technologies are essential. If you don't have a strategic vision, your state is actually going to hit the bottom rather than being at the top in terms of economic vitality and ability to deliver services.
Technology can speed the way in which federal, state and local governments could save money by bundling or working together to provide services more effectively.
Your kiosk article [GT Sept. 94] was a perfect example of the cost savings when a customer or a resident doesn't want to deal with a whole row of kiosks - for federal, state and local services and the like. It's not cost-effective for retail and different kinds of outlets to have to have all that space taken up by different kinds of kiosks. Governments are going to have to work a lot more closely together in order to deliver services among many different layers of government.
Initially it may not save a huge amount of money but in the long term it will. That savings is then going to be available to plow into other kinds of services. The cost will be high in making the transition, but once you begin to have people use the services in huge numbers, then that investment will begin to pay off. And that's where I see the real long-term benefit.
GT: I saw the other day that Hawaii is getting a new supercomputing center that is going to be on the Internet. What other kinds of IT projects do you have in the works?
Fukunaga: We have a grant now to do a three-year pilot to roll out Internet and e-mail services to every student, every faculty member, and every administrator, throughout our K-12 public school systems, our university, community college, and higher education campuses. If all of them were online at the same time, it would add about 300,000 regular users to the Internet in Hawaii.
One of the big issues is how you deliver that kind of reliable and efficient access given the current data and telephone networks in place - it's the equivalent of Mother's Day phone traffic every day 24 hours a day.
GT: I understand you are on the National Information Infrastructure Advisory Counsel. Have state and local government people been able to have some impact on the federal government?
Fukunaga: We have a small but growing coalition between the state and local government representatives on the NII Advisory Council. And what we've seen in the last few months are bridges that we have built between the state and local government regulatory people, the National Governors Association, elected officials, state operations people like the telecom directors association [NASTD], PTI and those groups.
We are now seeing that we can actually begin to build lobbying networks. It's been a tumultuous year, but I feel very positive about the next Congress when we can come up with proposals that will be able to gain wide acceptance and support.
Hawaii FYI
HONOLULU - Since June 1991, Hawaii has been operating an information services network that allows residents anywhere in the state the opportunity to access a broad array of international, national, and state government databases and information services.
The network and its electronic gateway - called Hawaii FYI - allows any resident to use a home computer and modem, or terminal at any one of the state's public libraries, schools or neighbor island state offices, to access over 70 public and private information services, most of which are free. The services range from reports on the latest legislative action, to restaurant guides and chat lines.
Hawaii FYI not only provides state residents with access to government information in a new, more convenient format, said Art Koga, it's also making them think and talk about the benefits and issues of an information society. Koga is the Executive Director of Hawaii Inc., the state-created corporation that is developing and promoting Hawaii FYI and the state's information industry. He calls Hawaii FYI a "calling card" to discussions about Hawaii's role as a high-tech information and service provider, and as a major player in the Pacific region for telecommunications and information initiatives.
- T.N.
