The State of the State address delivered each year by the governor is meant to be aspirational, but the goals it outlines should be achievable, as well. Identifying impediments, and the practical solutions, has to be part of the prescription.

Gov. David Ige’s third such speech to the Legislature, delivered Monday, included no surprise departures from his established agenda. It was a familiar topics list asserting the need for transformation in education, innovation and technology.

Establishing the budget priorities and allocating the funds are core parts of the executive function, but bureaucratic inertia must be overcome, which is considerably harder to do.

For example: The “cool the schools” initiative quickly bogged down after its launch last session. And despite Ige’s aim to accelerate highway improvements, lawmakers, seeing the logjam of projects already in the pipeline, rightly hesitated to authorize new taxes.

Perhaps recognizing this, Ige on Monday did not present a new funding mechanism for such goals, and has admitted to one obstacle to getting things done: the culture of state government.

Ige said he has worked from the start at making government “more efficient, effective and accountable to the people.” This requires a wholesale change in the way the state conducts its business, delivering services to the public.

He described a “Hackathon,” a problem-solving event in which a group of Honolulu Community College students emerged as the winners with a new way to schedule visitors at Oahu Community Correctional Center. The students developed a web-based, self-service system to handle the scheduling.

This innovation replaces the way it had been done: “by phone and Post-its, resulting in visits not being scheduled and families not being able to see their loved ones.”

With all due credit to the team, it is distressing that it took intervention by students to retire such an old-school, inefficient process.

If true transformation is to happen, it must be embraced by existing employees, who ultimately will be key to its success. Public worker unions also must know that if the governor is to fulfill his pledge to increase pay, employees must adapt to new roles and new technologies for delivering public service.

Modest improvements have been made. The website serving the state Capitol was overhauled into a truly useful portal several years ago, to cite one example. There are other innovations that should be replicated across state agencies.

Incremental progress on important state goals should be noted. Among them:

>> Education — Ige extolled the new “blueprint” for a less-centralized public school system as key to his innovation agenda. Much of the detail of how this transfer of power to the campuses would work — and how innovations should be shared — is yet to be developed.

>> Homelessness — Funding to keep families from losing their homes has had some success. And, Ige said, the state has managed to house twice the number of people with the same investment of public funds.

>> Affordable housing — The state is reducing the turnaround time for converting an empty unit in public housing into permanent housing. Still, reducing the gap in the affordable housing supply will take a concerted effort to clear bureaucratic hurdles and get more homes into the inventory.

>> Economy — The governor cited clean energy development, preserving agricultural lands and entrepreneurial support among the means to broaden the state’s economy.

These are all crucial elements to foster growth. Education. Innovation. Entrepreneurship.

But a fourth element — initiative, from within the state system itself — is just as essential.

Hawaii faces an uphill course toward its goals. To get there, everyone will need to get out and push.