The Office of Hawaiian Affairs will eliminate 28 of its 178 positions as part of a new strategic plan outlined yesterday.

The layoffs are expected to save OHA from $500,000 to $750,000 and are part of a shift to a more "results-based" strategy.

OHA plans to set specific goals, such as raising the level of Native Hawaiian incomes to meet or exceed non-Hawaiian incomes in the Islands.

The plan also calls for turning over OHA assets to a new Hawaiian government that could result from passage of the so-called Akaka bill in Congress, which would grant federal recognition to Native Hawaiians.

"That's fairly controversial," OHA administrator Clyde Namu'o said yesterday. OHA's trustees "see OHA as eventually going out of existence and being taken over, if you will, by this Native Hawaiian entity. ... That is a strong statement about how the trustees view the future for Native Hawaiians."

OHA was established by the 1978 state Constitutional Convention, in part, to oversee funding for programs and policies designed to improve and maintain the well-being of Native Hawaiians.

"Perhaps the vision of the 1978 Constitutional Convention delegates who saw OHA as a transition to Native Hawaiian governance will be realized in this next decade," OHA chairwoman Haunani Apoliona said.

Among OHA's new priorities are measureable improvements in Native Hawaiian housing, health, education and other areas from 2010 to 2016.

Before establishing the goals in the next three months or so, OHA officials must reorganize OHA personnel and hire new people with different skills — such as researchers who will determine baseline data and aid OHA trustees in setting new goals, Namu'o said.

With 16 current vacancies, 12 OHA employees could be laid off in the next month to six weeks, Namu'o said. But possible early retirements could reduce the number of people who will have to be laid off, he said.

OHA officials held a staff-wide meeting on the new strategic plan yesterday, which resulted in a "mix of emotions" about how it will affect the organization and Native Hawaiians, Apoliona said.

"I believe this is the most dynamic and powerful initiative we have ever launched in our organization's history," Apoliona said. "It is clear that the time had come for us to dig deeper and to find a way to do better."

Once the goals are set, Namu'o said, OHA trustees plan to meet every six months to compare how OHA programs are affecting the goals.

Hypothetically, Namu'o said, "If family income is 75 percent of non-Hawaiian incomes, every six months we'll look to see how are we doing — what kinds of activities have we implemented to improve our overall average income. By 2016, will we get to 100 percent? That's the goal."

Since its creation, OHA has come to see itself "as a need-based organization," Namu'o said. "If a particular group in the community says, 'We need your help doing this' — OHA reacts to that. That will continue to happen, but we won't lose sight of the long-range vision, which is to bring us to a place where these needs begin to diminish because we are simply a healthier population."