Office of Information Practices

As calendar year 2017 comes to an end, Hawaii’s Office of Information Practices (OIP) has posted its Annual Report for fiscal year 2017 on the Reports page at oip.hawaii.gov.  With only nine employees, OIP is the single, statewide agency that administers the open records and open meetings laws applicable to all state, county, and independent agencies, and most boards.

OIP saw a 40.4% increase in the number of formal requests for assistance that were filed in FY 2017.  In the last two months alone, 48 of the 278 new formal cases were filed at OIP.  Despite the huge increase in formal cases, OIP closed 232 cases in FY 2017, which is only nine less than the record it set the prior year.  As a direct result of the increase in new cases, however, OIP’s formal case backlog increased from 104 in FY 2016 to 150 at the end of FY 2017.

The 956 informal requests for assistance were handled through OIP’s Attorney of the Day (AOD) service, which typically provides responses the same day.  When the formal cases received and resolved in FY 2017 are added to the AOD numbers, OIP resolved 93% of the total 1,234 formal and informal requests for assistance in the same year they were received.

In addition to resolving these formal and informal requests for assistance, OIP added or revised four training materials, conducted nine live training sessions, monitored or testified on 108 bills and resolutions, monitored 40 lawsuits, and provided 24 What’s New articles or interviews.

To be added to OIP’s What’s New list, please email [email protected].  Also, if you would like to receive What’s New articles or attachments in a different format, please contact OIP at (808) 586-1400 or [email protected].