Office of Information Practices

Happy New Year! For those of you who enjoyed some time off during the holidays, here are a couple of news items that you may have missed from the state Office of Information Practices.

The new administrative rules for appeals to OIP took effect on December 31, 2012. Despite suggestions to increase the complexity of OIP’s processing of inquiries, which other testifiers opposed, the new rules continue to reflect the free and informal nature of OIP’s dispute resolution process and honor the legislative direction to not turn them into contested case proceedings. One provision of these rules also describes the record that will be transmitted by OIP to the circuit court for judicial appeals from OIP’s decisions under Act 176, SLH 2012, which went into effect on January 1, 2013. OIP’s new rules, along with the initial draft, an explanation of the changes made in the final version, testimonies received, a verbal recording of the public hearing on the rules, are posted on the Laws/Rules/Opinions page of OIP’s website at hawaii.gov.oip.

OIP also posted its Annual Report for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2012 on theReports page of its website. In addition to performance statistics, the Annual Report contains summaries of OIP’s opinions issued in FY 2012, as well as a sampling of informal advice provided through the Attorney of the Day service.

For the latest on OIP and open government news, please look for these What’s New articles that are posted here, or e-mailed upon request. To be added to OIP’s e-mail list, please e-mail [email protected].