Abercrombie names leader of information technology office

HONOLULU - An experienced leader of government research oversight, Sanjeev "Sonny" Bhagowalia, was named last week as Hawaii's first full-time chief information officer.

Gov. Neil Abercrombie chose Bhagowalia for the job of upgrading the state government's aging computer and research systems.

Bhagowalia will lead a seven-person information research office tasked with improving public online services, making government more efficient and saving money.

Bhagowalia starts his job this month and will receive a $179,700 salary. He will prepare a plan for improving the state's information research by the time the state Legislature convenes in January, Abercrombie said.

The government

Potential changes he could enact include enabling more electronic transactions with the government, digitizing unemployment check printouts, improving computer communications between state departments and creating a government data center.

"IT was malfunctioning in the state," Coppa said. "It's on track to be a new day for getting business done in the state of Hawaii."

Bill into law spending about $1

Abercrombie as well signed a bill into law spending about $1.2 million annually for operations of the state Office of Information Management and Innovation.

Since taking his job at the General Services Administration in May 2010, Bhagowalia has supported implementation of federal government e-Gov and open government programs including data.gov, federal cloud computing, federal data center consolidation and mobile applications.