M\u0101ori data in M\u0101ori hands<\/a> with the goal of ensuring M\u0101ori sovereignty doesn’t “stop at the server door”.<\/p>\nDesigned by Te K\u0101hui Raraunga, Te P\u0101 T\u016bwatawata will be available to marae, hap\u016b, iwi or other organisations who wish to store their data within the protection of the P\u0101.<\/p>\n
Principal advisor Erena Mikaere said it was a commercial storage service designed specifically to meet the needs of iwi M\u0101ori, hap\u016b and marae.<\/p>\n
The project was built on open source technology and led by M\u0101ori scientists, M\u0101ori engineers and grounded in tikanga M\u0101ori, she said.<\/p>\n
“Central to everything from its architecture, to its initial conceptions, to the values that drive it, and then also to our customer service delivery, it’s really about doing things in a very M\u0101ori way, based on a Te Ao M\u0101ori worldview. And so to that end, we didn’t just want to offer like an automated store with us and push this button and register your name and company and here’s the invoice type of style. It starts with a conversation, it starts with a k\u014drero, like all good things. And so that means that we can provide them with a really tailored service.”<\/p>\n
Te P\u0101 T\u016bwatawata provides end-to-end encryption of data, both in transit and at rest, which Mikaere said would mean only the group who submitted the data to the platform would have the “keys” required to decrypt it.<\/p>\n
“What it does is it provides a safe place for some of our data that we might consider, or that wh\u0101nau and hap\u016b, iwi might consider are some of our most sensitive sets of m\u0101tauranga. It provides a way in which we can protect that and ensure extra restriction, say over another data set, which perhaps isn’t as sensitive.”<\/p>\n
Mikaere said there had already been inquiries from iwi keen to advance their archiving aspirations.<\/p>\n
“Much of our data, you know, if we think about some of our audio files and video files from back in the day, are held by others. And this is an opportunity for iwi to be that one true source of their information.”<\/p>\n
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\nThe network hopes to ensure M\u0101ori sovereignty doesn’t “stop at the server door”.
\nPhoto: 123RF\n<\/p>\n
A significant step towards data sovereignty<\/p>\n
Mikaere said the launch of Te P\u0101t\u016bwatawata was a significant step towards data sovereignty. A nation without control of its digital infrastructure was a nation whose sovereignty “stops at the server door”, she said.<\/p>\n
“For us and all indigenous peoples really globally, sovereign digital systems aren’t and shouldn’t be a technical preference. They are a precondition for self-determination, for rangatiratanga.”<\/p>\n
Of all the layers within a digital ecosystem, storage was the most foundational, it determined who held the data and who could access. Without it every app, platform, or AI model, especially AI models trained on indigenous knowledge, remain vulnerable to foreign jurisdiction and to corporate interests, she said.<\/p>\n
“There’s a track record of others treating our data as a resource to extract, not to steward and not to protect, but to extract. You know, the same way that land was extracted, and the same way that language was extracted, and in the same way that children were even extracted from the arms of their wh\u0101nau and placed into systems that were never built for them. So the pattern of that isn’t new, the medium is. Te P\u0101tuwatawata provides a solution to stop that.”<\/p>\n
Mikaere said it was already occurring, with large AI models giving answers in te reo M\u0101ori, or answers about things in Te Ao M\u0101ori, which were not necessarily true.<\/p>\n
“One of the other significant solutions that we must ensure is having M\u0101ori governance over the data. Because… I’m not sure if everybody truly understands that AI is built on data. So without data governance, there is no AI governance. Without data infrastructure, there is no AI infrastructure. So if we can get data infrastructure and data governance right first, then that goes a long way to ensuring safe and ethical AI.”<\/p>\n
Te K\u0101hui Raraunga had produced a M\u0101ori Data Governance Model and more recently a M\u0101ori AI Governance Framework which Mikaere said provided great blueprints for how to ensure safety as things continued to change.<\/p>\n
“The pace that people are trying to build AI that is not for us, that is not cognisant of the environment either, is really scary. And so the faster that we can become more aware and the faster that we can have and buy into solutions like this, which really are about protection and more than that, and they’re about leveraging off of the opportunity and the potential that AI brings, because it does, but only in the right hands and only with the right leadership and governance behind it.”<\/p>\n
Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Erena Mikaere, Principal Advisor for Te P\u0101 T\u016bwatawata at the launch of Te P\u0101 T\u016bwatawata in Wellington on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":443068,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48,47,42,43,49,46,44,45,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-443067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-audio","tag-current-affairs","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443067\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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