The Native Hawaiian Data Landscape: Making Data Available to Better Address Household Need
Justin Hong began working at the intersection of data and the Native Hawaiian community in 2010. Though he’s observed challenges inherent to cross-sector collaboration as well as barriers to data accessibility over the years, Hong is hopeful given the progress made to date. Looking ahead, Hong sees the potential for further strategic growth and collaboration in the field of Native Hawaiian data and accessibility.
The Starting Line
With over a decade of experience in the field, Hong knows first-hand the challenges of working with data to guide change within the Native Hawaiian community. “Data access and utilization are required to reach our vision for our community, but we don’t always have access or are able to utilize crucial data. Competing priorities and limited resources have inhibited the development of centralized data systems to provide access to data. There is more collaboration happening now that shows promise in achieving future goals,” Hong says.
The Native Hawaiian Data Portal is a concrete example of progress made in the last five years. Developed and maintained through an ongoing collaboration between Kamehameha Schools, Liliu‘okalani Trust, Office of Hawaiian Affairs, and Papa Ola Lokahi, the Native Hawaiian Data Portal is an interactive resource that allows users to filter, search, and find Native Hawaiian data from multiple sources on a centralized platform.
“The minimum requirement is to make data easily accessible and usable for everyone. This is the starting point because without access to the data, nothing else is possible.”
Hong adds, “Organizations and our community are working together to provide access the data, understanding it, identifying gaps, and eventually applying it to programs and services. Collaboration becomes easier when everyone is at the table looking at the same data set. Data isn’t the solution, rather it helps to facilitate a process that leads to coordinated efforts and shared goals.”
Identifying Data Gaps to Better Address Native Hawaiian Household Need
There are gaps in Hawai‘i’s data landscape to work through so that data can be used to address Native Hawaiian household need. Hong identified three major opportunities that, if addressed, would have a significant impact in the Native Hawaiian data landscape: data democratization, data sharing, and evaluative data.
Data Democratization
“We have access to a lot of data, but the data are not always ‘accessible,’” Hong says. Many organizations have reporting requirements, but there is no requirement to make those data usable at scale. Oftentimes accessing the data involves sifting through thousands of pages of PDF documents to compile the data necessary for research or program development. Hong explains, “‘Data democratization’ means making data ‘accessible’ to everyone,” adding that data democratization can be achieved through a central hub where data is stored and accessed. Data would be compiled, cleaned, and formatted in a way that gives anyone access to vast amounts of data across multiple sources nearly instantaneously. With such a central hub, Hong adds, “One wouldn’t have to delve through thousands of pages of documents to pull the data – the data would be readily available. It’s an issue we are currently working to solve here in Hawai‘i and has exciting potential for the future.”
Data Sharing
“There are a lot of good public data sources; however, there are a lot of barriers to sharing when it comes to private data. Data ownership and privacy protection are important, but they can also make it difficult to get complete data sets when it comes to a particular issue.” Hong suggests that a possible solution is the ‘storehouse model,’ where an independent entity stores and manages data for multiple organizations. Each organization has access to their own data, which is private and protected, while also having the ability to benchmark against aggregated anonymized data of all the organizations using the data storehouse.
Evaluative Data
Oftentimes an organization may make a data-guided decision, but there’s no data collection mechanism in place to measure the real impact of the decision or subsequent programming. Even if there is measurable movement in outcomes, without an evaluative data plan in place, organizations can’t draw a straight line from their program changes to impact on outcomes. “Getting evaluative data is difficult because it requires a large effort across multiple systems, and many entities struggle to find the balance between resourcing programs vs. assessing those programs,” says Hong. Finding that balance, however, ultimately contributes to developing and improving programs.
Cultural Context Applied to Native Hawaiian Data
Data is a key part of understanding Native Hawaiian household need, but equally important is understanding the historical and cultural context. With the data showing disparities across healthcare, disease outcomes, education, jobs, and access to resources, contextualizing this data within the lived experience and values of the Native Hawaiian community is critical to developing and implementing culturally-sensitive programs and systems to serve the community.
Photo credit: Office of Hawaiian Affairs
“When working with Native Hawaiian data, history and context needs to be understood and held at the forefront of any narrative produced from the data. Native Hawaiians have the right to have their story told their way, and we have to be thoughtful about how we collect, interpret, and utilize data. A lot of research is done from a western perspective, but when applied to an indigenous community the values don’t hold. For example, the way we talk about conventional wealth - income, employment, assets - may not apply to people who are subsistence farmers by choice. By the conventional definition of wealth, these individuals look impoverished, when in reality they are wealthy because they have everything they need. Our current systems don’t capture this nuance,” says Hong.
Moving Forward as a Collective
“More and more, organizations are working together to develop a cohesive, succinct, data-guided narrative in order to effectively move forward in addressing need,” says Hong. It can be difficult to bring multiple organizations together because each has their own mission, priorities, responsibilities, and stakeholders. A vision to encourage [deeper] collaboration is forming in Hawai‘i and among Native Hawaiian-serving organizations,” says Hong.
A proposed Native Hawaiian Research Institute – a collaboration between Native Hawaiian community-based and service-providing organizations – is a potentially powerful driver towards a cohesive data narrative and approach. Hong says, “If the [Native Hawaiian Research Institute] goes well, it’s a game changer for data in Hawai‘i. There isn’t a concrete structure yet, but even the idea of it provides a lot of potential. It’s a matter of figuring out how and when.”
Justin Hong is principal of SCIMA, a local consultancy focused on research and evaluation in Hawai‘i and among the Native Hawaiian community. He can be reached at justinhong83@hotmail.com.
The views and opinions expressed in this piece are those of the person interviewed, and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Hawai‘i Data Collaborative.
