Te Mana Raraunga’s principles, the CARE principles and the Māori Data Governance Model — a genuine New Zealand data-governance framework to engage with honestly when AI touches Māori data.

dgm is an independent osFoundry integration partner — not affiliated with the company that makes osFoundry, and dgm has not yet completed any client integrations. This article describes services dgm offers, not past results.

Māori Data Sovereignty is a genuine, New Zealand-specific data-governance framework. If your AI will touch data about Māori people, communities or taonga, engage with it honestly rather than reducing it to ‘data stays local’.

Key points

  • Te Mana Raraunga has published six principles of Māori Data Sovereignty
  • The CARE principles and the Māori Data Governance Model add structure
  • It is about authority, relationship and guardianship — not just physical location
  • Te Hiku’s Papa Reo te reo Māori models are guardianship-licensed, not redistributable open models

The detail

One genuinely New Zealand-specific dimension is Māori Data Sovereignty. Te Mana Raraunga, the Māori Data Sovereignty Network, has published six principles — Rangatiratanga (authority/self-determination over data), Whakapapa (relationships and context), Whanaungatanga (obligations and accountabilities), Kotahitanga (collective benefit), Manaakitanga (reciprocity and an ethic of care) and Kaitiakitanga (guardianship). These sit alongside the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance (Collective benefit, Authority to control, Responsibility, Ethics) from the Global Indigenous Data Alliance, and the Māori Data Governance Model developed by Te Kāhui Raraunga with Stats NZ under the Mana Ōrite relationship agreement. The point is not physical location — it is authority, relationship and guardianship over Māori data. If your AI system will touch data about Māori people, communities or taonga, these principles are a real governance framework to engage with honestly, cited to their source, rather than reduced to a generic ‘data stays local’ line. (A related example is Te Hiku Media’s Papa Reo te reo Māori speech models, released under a guardianship-based Kaitiakitanga License — they are access-controlled and Māori-benefit-directed, not a redistributable open-source model.)

Where this leaves your AI project

A model-agnostic platform like osFoundry helps you meet these obligations in practice — you can keep data in New Zealand (an Auckland region or local-first), control model choice via BYOK, and connect to your own systems. dgm can help you scope and implement with this in mind.

How dgm can help

dgm is an independent integration partner that helps New Zealand organisations put osFoundry to work — from choosing a worthwhile first use case through to the hands-on build and connecting it to the systems you already run. dgm is not affiliated with the company that makes osFoundry, and it has not yet completed any client integrations, so what is described here is the service dgm offers, not past results. If you want help scoping a realistic first project, dgm can work through it with you.

This article is general information only and is not legal, tax or investment advice. Rates, caps and programme status change — confirm the current position with the relevant official body or a licensed adviser before you act.