The Senate Select Investigative Committee held a hearing Tuesday morning concerning the status of the contract between ASG and DataHouse Inc., the company which built and maintained the Talofa Pass system, and what has become of the data that was collected when the system was online.
Committee Chairman Togiola Tulafono said at the beginning of the hearing that travelers have complained as to why they have to register again with the Department of Health when they had already provided information that DoH is now collecting under the Talofa Pass.
The committee questioned the Governor’s Chief of Staff Loa Tuimavave Laupola and DataHouse Account Executive Saipai Cassens.
Tuimavave informed the committee that ASG’s contract with DataHouse ended on August 30 and the Governor’s Office is working with DataHouse to turn all data and information collected by the company to the government. He said that the transition is being supervised by Ray Tulafono of the Governor’s Officer. Tulafono is the Chief Information Officer in the Governor’s Office.
Togiola said the CEO of DataHouse Ms. Hong Phan at a previous hearing that when their contract ends, all information including passwords, would be turned over to a server, AWS, Amazon Web Service which ASG would have access to.
He asked if this has been completed.
According to Loa, the Governor’s Office was still negotiating with AWS.
Ms. Cassens said that DataHouse has fulfilled its part of the contract and ASG is now dealing with AWS to keep the system in place.
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According to Loa, ASG has completed payments to DataHouse, and said the total amount paid to the company was $6 million.
Senators Magalei Logovii and Satele Lili’o asked why the full amount was paid to DataHouse, when the transition of data has not been completed. They felt that ASG should have withheld the final payment until all of the data has been secured under the government’s control.
According to Cassens, DataHouse has fulfilled its role and ASG was now dealing with Amazon web service as a third party.
The Chief of Staff explained that they need to make sure storage of the data is secure and none of the data is compromised.
The committee will call in the Chief Information Officer Ray Tulafono on Thursday, and will question the Department of Health Wednesday about their new registration of travelers.
