---
title: Maori beneficiaries are the training data 2023
description: Explore the implications of Maori beneficiaries training data in the new facial recognition system developed by MSD.
url: https://www.taiuru.co.nz/maori-beneficiaries-are-the-training-data/
markdown_url: https://www.taiuru.co.nz/maori-beneficiaries-are-the-training-data.md
type: post
slug: maori-beneficiaries-are-the-training-data
author: Karaitiana Taiuru
published: 2026-11-01T20:10:20Z
modified: 2026-11-01T20:27:33Z
language: en-NZ
taxonomies:
  category:
    - Digital Identity Facial Recognition & Biometrics
word_count: 397
tokens: 607
---

# Maori beneficiaries are the training data 2023

Note: This article was first prepared for offline presentations when the reports it discusses were released. It has since been updated and published online on the date shown.

In November 2023, the Ministry of Social Development launched Identity Check, a government facial recognition system for verifying identity online. MSD’s own report called the risk of racial bias “unknown”. The system had been in development since 2019, and no tests specifically for racial bias had been run on our population.

MSD’s Māori Reference Group still backed the launch. Its chair said: “There will be some instances where that racial bias will come through in the current … iterations of the system.” The group said it was comfortable because of a commitment to keep improving the technology.

I said at the time that no level of racial bias is acceptable. Māori beneficiaries were being used as guinea pigs to train an international system to recognise Māori and Pasifika faces.

MSD’s own documents showed why it mattered. Officials warned that if the technology was biased, affected clients, including the Māori and Pasifika clients who make up a large proportion of MSD’s clients, could go on to become the subject of fraud investigations.

The sequence is the problem: deploy first, test later, and get approval for accepting the risk from a reference group without specialist data or AI expertise. That isn’t how you treat a technology with a well-documented global history of misidentifying people of colour, and it isn’t a Te Tiriti partnership.

If the Crown wants Māori to trust digital identity, the order has to change:

Test on our population before launch, not after. That includes Māori with moko, and the testing has to be independent of the agencies using the system.

Engage with iwi, hapū and Māori data and AI experts, not only an internal reference group.

Rule out using identity checks in fraud investigations until any bias has been eliminated, not just reduced.

Accept that “it will get better” is not a safeguard. People are harmed in the meantime.

Biometric data is permanent. If it’s compromised or misused, it can never be fixed for the person it belongs to. Māori shouldn’t have to carry that risk so the system can learn.

Sources: RNZ, Racial bias expected in government’s new Identity Check (21 November 2023); RNZ, Māori being used as ‘guinea pigs’ for facial recognition tech (23 November 2023).