The Māori ICT organisations landscape is diverse and un-documented which creates confusion or misunderstandings by governments and lobby groups as to what Māori ICT groups exist, thus resulting in Internet/ICT consultations not being held with relevant Māori groups or misconceptions from non Māori perspectives being the norm. The end result for Māori is economic, social and consultation opportunities with the Internet in Aotearoa/New Zealand sometimes being ignored by decision makers.
This analysis and directory produces a reference for governments and lobby groups to identify relevant Māori ICT groups so that Māori can be better involved, fairly and more widely consulted and to provide more benefits to Māori ICT stakeholders who currently miss out on consultations and opportunities. It will also allow interested individuals to identify online professional groups they may want to participate in and provides a snap shot of the past Māori ICT organisations.
This report also briefly discuss other ICT and government advisory groups who have Māori representatives and whose clientele are predominantly Maori. It does not not cover Māori owned ICT businesses, education facilities with Māori ICT groups nor the Māori broadcasting arena and Maori departments who have Māori ICT staff.
In the first instance, public records such as companies office, web sites, media and personal communications were used. Then informal meetings with representatives were conducted and offered. This publication remains a living document and that will be updated when appropriate facts can be verified.
Another issue within the Māori ICT organisation industry is that the same person may associate with many organisations creating a false impression that one person is the authority of all things Māori ICT related, or perhaps that an individual has too much mana. Because of this, on each organisation page is a list of key people who were/are members of that organisation and then another separate page that lists individuals with their associated organisations which allows a quick reference look up based in either an individual or organisation. This provides proof that representation is fairly distributed in most areas.
There are also a number of influential Māori individuals who have made significant contributions to the Māori ICT industry. This section is a work in progress due to the difficulty of identifying appropriate individuals.
InternetNZ Funding has made this research possible.
