Digital Democracy is a portal where a general audience of everyday citizens can learn about the people and activities in the Hawaiʻi Legislature with the goal of fostering better civic engagement and more thoughtful decisions in the public interest.
Readers can use the platform to follow legislative action on important issues and connect that action directly to lawmakers, their history, motivations and political ideologies. The Digital Democracy website introduces legislators and displays the current year’s agenda on major topics, as seen in legislation. The technology tools collect data throughout state government about legislation, votes, money and politics as well as the transcripts of public hearings and floor sessions in a unique, searchable database.
The Hawai’i version of Digital Democracy was launched in 2025 in partnership with Honolulu Civil Beat.
The project began in California, where the development of the Digital Democracy platform was inspired by the decline in media coverage of state government and by the significant impact of decisions made in a state that ranks as the world’s fifth largest economy with an annual budget of about $300 billion.
The Digital Democracy platform was built in 2023 in a collaboration that included CalMatters, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and 10up, a global web development firm. The database and artificial intelligence were designed and built by faculty and students at Cal Poly, where an earlier version of Digital Democracy was launched in 2015 by former state Sen. Sam Blakeslee and then-Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom at the university’s Institute for Advanced Technology and Public Policy. In 2023 the project was moved to CalMatters.
Funding for Digital Democracy at CalMatters comes from the Knight Foundation, Arnold Ventures and the Lodestar Foundation. Arnold Ventures was also a major funder of the earlier version of Digital Democracy. For more information about funding and other descriptions of CalMatters, please visit the news organization’s “About Us” page.
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Credits
Digital Democracy technology was built in collaboration with CalMatters, the Institute for Advanced Technology and Public Policy at Cal Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo and 10up, a global web development firm. The principals involved in this project were:
- Honolulu Civil Beat: Amy Pyle, Executive Editor-In-Chief; Patti Epler, Ideas Editor; Richard Wiens, Deputy Ideas Editor; Chad Blair, Politics Editor; Matthew Leonard, Senior Data Reporter; April Estrellon, Design Lead; Evan Nagle, Web Developer
- CalMatters: Dave Lesher, senior editor and director, Digital Democracy; Ramsey Isler, director of special projects; Alexis Ramirez, full stack web developer; Ryan Sabalow, Digital Democracy reporter; Thomas Gerrity, engineering manager; Engineers: Alexis Ramirez, Andrew Chan; Hans Poschman, transcription manager; Toshihiro Kuboi, consultant, Jeremia Kimelman, data reporter; Erica Yee, data reporter; John Osborn D’Agostino, data and interactives editor; Ramsey Isler, Director of Special Projects.
- Cal Poly: Foaad Khosmood, professor, computer science; Alex Dekhtyar, professor, data science; Christine Robertson, consultant. Assistance also from Cal Poly students, faculty and partners at the University of Miami, Graz University of Technology and Munich University of Applied Sciences.
- 10up: Nora Conley, Eduard Florea, Dianne Gillespie, Morgan Hartnett, Ashley Hill, Daniel Jackson, Craig Jadown, Nicolas Knight, Nickolas Kola, Steve Meyers, Luiz Nogueira, Toby Schrapel.Â