House Bill 2491 amends and reenacts existing public records and technology statutes and creates a new section (text not provided in the extracted facts). The bill adds statutory protections that exempt from public inspection and copying certain personal information submitted to Washington Technology Solutions (WaTech) in connection with digital experience platform services, and it updates RCW 43.105.020, RCW 43.105.365, and RCW 42.56.230 to add or clarify multiple categories of personal-information exemptions already listed in law. The bill also imposes procedural requirements on state and local agencies that maintain widely accessible electronic records: agencies must, to the extent possible, collect information directly from and with the consent of the individual, establish correction procedures and review mechanisms, include database creation/update dates when personal information is widely available, follow retention and archival schedules under chapter 40.14 RCW, and review at least once every five years the information they collect and justify its purpose. It requires certain reporting or record-sharing: the Department of Licensing must provide the legislature, on request, specified aggregate or disclosable information about licenses and identicards; the Board of Industrial Insurance Appeals must provide copies of all final claim resolution settlement agreements to the Department of Labor and Industries. The bill expands and clarifies exemptions elsewhere in RCW 42.56.230 to cover records that could reveal identities of individuals performing undercover or covert law enforcement, confidential public health work, public assistance fraud or child support investigations; certain vessel registration records; voluntarily submitted 911 and emergency-notification data; information about future voters; self-exclusion program records for gambling; participants in a past bump-fire stock buy-back program; and most personal and financial state lottery player information (limited disclosure allowed for name and city/town of residence or with prior written permission). Some portions of the vehicle/license/identicard subsection and the new section text were not included in the extracted facts, so the full wording and scope of those provisions cannot be confirmed here.

If enacted, the law would keep personally identifying information submitted to Washington Technology Solutions (WaTech) for agencies’ online systems and digital services out of the public inspection/copying process and add or reaffirm a variety of other targeted privacy exemptions (for example, certain driver, vessel, lottery, gambling self‑exclusion, 911, and claim‑settlement records). State and local agencies and WaTech would also be required to collect personal data directly from individuals when possible, keep records accurate, provide correction procedures, include creation/update dates where personal data are widely available, follow state retention schedules, and review every five years why they collect each data element. The practical effect will be more protected handling of sensitive records and fewer disclosure requests succeeding for those categories, but also more administrative work and likely costs for agencies that use WaTech services: they will need to implement consent and correction processes, perform periodic five‑year reviews, and follow archival rules. Specific operational details and any funding or enforcement mechanisms are not included in the provided text, and parts of the statutory language (including some vehicle/license reporting provisions and the bill’s new section) are incomplete here, so the full scope and exact implementation requirements remain unclear.