The answers people most want from government often deal with the problems they face closest to home.

From burglaries to speeders, from the quality of their environment to the quality of their children's education, the issues that matter to Hawai'i residents may have started down the street.

Finding answers on subjects you care about is not as intimidating as you might expect, unless the information you're after involves something that agencies can't or won't release.

So Honolulu police can tell you about crime in the subdistrict where you live, but you probably can't find out the details of their investigation into your neighbor's home burglary.

How much information you can get also depends on where you live. For example, Maui police can tell you about crime down to your neighborhood or where you want to buy a home, but Honolulu police aren't set up for that.

Greer Prince, a research analyst with the Maui County Police Department, fields about 100 requests a year from people thinking of buying property but wanting to know first how often a home is broken into.

"Some people want you to just say if it is a safe place," Prince said. "That's relative. We can't tell you this is a safe neighborhood but we can tell you what has happened in a neighborhood."

Regardless of the county, it's best to start with a call to the police chief's office and you may need to make a written request for crime information. Research and copying fees are sometimes charged.

To give you an idea of what kind of information is available with a little digging, we looked at issues surrounding three topics of high interest — the environment, education and public safety.

THE ENVIRONMENT

At the state Department of Health, officials recently created a Web site to warn beachgoers about potentially harmful levels of bacteria and pollution in the water. But the department will be the first to admit that the Web page is hard to find and sometimes hard to understand.

"Unfortunately, our Web site is not where we want it to be," said Watson Okubo, supervisor for the monitoring and analysis section of the Clean Water Branch.

Still, the idea sounds good to Kailua residents who have endured several runoff-related beach closures in recent days.

"I think it's great, because my son likes to surf there," said Cheryl Griffith, who uses Kailua Beach often. "You don't have to go all the way down there, and your kids are wanting to go in the water and you get to the beach and there is a warning sign."

When heavy rain flooded Windward O'ahu, the department posted details from six sewage overflows and the affected coastal areas. Specific locations, the amount of sewage that overflowed in each incident and whether warning signs had been posted were all available online.

The state has more than 400 beaches and the busier ones are tested twice a week. Health officials measure what they call "indicator bacteria," which helps determine if any viruses or pathogens are in the water that can make you sick, Okubo said.

One catch to statistics, online or not, is that not all public information is clearly presented.

Dean Higuchi, spokesman for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's office in Hawai'i, stressed that a concerned individual should not draw conclusions solely from any Web site. Instead, call the agency that posted the data and speak to someone directly, he advised.

Curious about what is in the drinking water coming out of your tap? The Honolulu Board of Water Supply offers an online search engine that provides a report based on any address, home or business.

"You can type in your address and it will pull up a report for your house," said Su Shin, board spokeswoman. "It tells you exactly what is in your water."

The Consumer Confidence Report, which also is mailed to customers by July 1 each year, lists contaminants found in the water that are regulated by the EPA and the Department of Health, Shin said. The report is mandated by the EPA, but the Honolulu Web site is an extra level of public access, Shin said.

Just because a contaminant shows up on the list does not mean the water is polluted, Higuchi said.

"It lists all the contaminants that are found and whether or not they exceed our standards," he said. "And that is the key. If they don't exceed under EPA or state standards, the water is clean."

The EPA has its own Web site that allows consumers to search for their community's pollution information, Higuchi said.

For example, the public can view the annual toxics release reporting inventory and tailor the search to individual ZIP codes. It shows what businesses — such as power plants, refineries or wastewater treatment plants — use on a regular basis.

Being on a list, however, is not an indictment of wrongdoing, Higuchi said.

"It is not telling you they dumped something," he said. "It tells you they used something."

EDUCATION

Information about the public schools in your neighborhood is plentiful, but it's selective; there's more on demographics and school finances than student and teacher discipline for improper behavior, for example.

Each school has available online a School Status and Improvement Report. It lists an enormous array of student and community demographic information, teacher information, an assessment of whether the school's facilities are adequate and a school quality survey that includes whether students feel safe.

Schools also have two financial accounts that parents might be interested in: a "local" account, which comprises all donated funds, and a larger taxpayer-funded account.

Both are open for public scrutiny, said Catherine Payne, principal at Farrington High School.

It's "big business," Payne said, and she isn't joking.

The January statement on her local account read: $247,858.19. None of the money is from the state — instead it comes from students; fundraisers; and community donations, which principals can use to pay for a wide array of things, such as field trips.

The larger taxpayer-funded account open for public scrutiny — in Farrington's case, a $15.5 million budget made up of state and federal funds — is based on the state Department of Education's "weighted student formula." Funds reflect enrollment and the needs of each student body.

At Jarrett Middle School, Principal Gerald Teramae has a plan on how his school wants to spend $2.3 million starting next fall — the number of teachers he can hire, clerical staff, new equipment and supplies.

The state Department of Education hopes to post each school's academic and financial plan on the Internet so parents can learn more about each school's goals and expectations, Teramae said.

"The intent is to make everything we do at every level of the department very transparent," he said.

On the other hand, the public does not have access to information about teacher or staff discipline because under union contracts, that information is confidential, Payne said. But the public can review information about the number of student violations, including the number of times a weapon was brought on campus, in the School Status and Improvement Report.

PUBLIC SAFETY

In many instances, public safety information is off limits to the average citizen — you need to be personally involved to see a police report on a crime or a motor vehicle accident.

But statistics on the number of speeding tickets and crimes is not only available, it is becoming more accessible. For Neighbor Islanders, recent improvements in police departments' computerized record-keeping is making data easier to obtain.

Police in Hawai'i, Maui and Kaua'i counties will provide citizens with the number of speeding tickets written in their communities.

On the Big Island and Kaua'i, a citizen can focus that request on a specific street, thanks to computer systems installed last year. But on Maui, police are only able to provide that information by district — there are six — because they have not finished installing their new computer system.

However, if all a citizen wants is broad statistics, Prince can find citation statistics for time periods as short as a single day, she said.

The Honolulu Police Department, however, cannot currently provide detailed speeding violation statistics to the public, said Lt. Bennett Martin of the department's traffic division. The only information available is the number of citations written each week in each of the department's eight districts, he said.

HPD and the state judiciary are still trying to agree on how to exchange detailed statistics from the judiciary's new computer system, which went into service last fall. Historically, the judiciary has stored this information and used to provide printouts for HPD, Martin said.

However, the same new system run by the judiciary can provide the public with the number of citations issued at specific locations, said Marsha Kitagawa, department spokeswoman.

A search fee may be charged, but Kitagawa could not provide a price range without first having a detailed information request. The state Office of Information Practices said search fees are $2.50 per 15 minutes and fees for review and segregation are $5 per 15 minutes. But OIP Director Les Kondo said that all agencies are required to waive the first $30 of any request.

Kaua'i County Police Department Assistant Chief Gordon Isoda said his department's new computer system, installed last year, allows citizens greater access to information about crime activity in their neighborhood.

"If it works as it should, we could tell you the type of crime that happened," Isoda said. "For example, if there was a burglary on this block or that block."

Crimes by street also are available from Big Island and Maui police, but not from the Honolulu police, which can only retrieve statistical information by large area beats and sub-beats.

Crimes on beats can be obtained through the HPD Web site, but there is no description of each beat's geographical boundaries, said Nathan Matsuoka, a research analyst with the department. The public would have to call the main police station or the nearest police substation to learn this, he said.