Disabled people continue to be disadvantaged by their limited ability to engage with digital and online services, according to a new report: Digital inclusion user insights – Disabled people. The Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) estimates that around 20% of all New Zealanders are digitally excluded. This essentially means that this community does not have the skills or access needed to participate in the online world.

The purpose of this research was to understand the perceptions and feelings about digital inclusion from people with disabilities as they go about their daily lives. The goal was to understand the key pain points for individuals, what they liked about the current system and what improvements could be made to ensure a more equitable digital environment for all.

For disabled people, one of the most vulnerable communities, this research highlights how the experience of engaging with digital services could be leaving disabled people behind, increasing the number of people who cannot easily and confidently use the internet and online services.

Adam Stapleton, Programme Delivery Manager, Digital Public Service branch at DIA said, “The report highlights issues that have impacted disabled people’s ability to easily and confidently use the internet and digital services. COVID-19 has exacerbated some of these issues and yet also produced an environment where new insights to improve digital inclusion can be embraced and used. This is a real opportunity to create traction.”

The research report gives disabled people a voice and outlines their lived experience in terms of being digitally enabled. It outlines 5 key findings which could help improve the design of websites and online services, making an impact on how disabled people experience the digital.

The report includes insights from disabled people and 5 recommendations for Government on how to increase digital inclusion.

• a need to enforce or incentivise application of the Web Accessibility Standard
• a call to increase the co-design of accessible, digital services
• strong demand for digital skills training from within the disability community
• demand from the disabled community for affordable access to digital tools and technology
• a call to explore employment and post-employment support for the disabled community.

The findings highlight that vulnerable communities like those of the disabled people community will continue to be disadvantaged by their ability to engage or not engage with digital services. The report shows that government agencies can design and provide services differently to be more inclusive for disabled people.

Making digital inclusion a priority

In 2019, the New Zealand government laid out the Digital Inclusion Blueprint and Action Plan, a vision and roadmap working to ensure that all New Zealanders can participate in, contribute to and benefit from the digital world. The Blueprint sets out 4 roles for government in building a digitally included New Zealand: lead, connect, support and deliver.

That vision continues to come to life in the 2020 Digital Inclusion Action Plan which outlines the range of government activities underway and planned to make a more digitally inclusive New Zealand. For example, focusing on closing digital skills gaps for whānau (extended families and communities), iwi (Maori community or people) and small businesses to support them in being able to better engage digitally. Another key part of the work is the user experience research work — a series of 7 user experience reports to understand the perceptions and feelings about digital inclusion.

The goal is to understand the key pain points for individuals of vulnerable communities. What they liked about the current online environment, what they do not, and what improvements could be made to make it a more equitable digital environment.

These reports are more than words on a page. These reports will be used to inform, advise and help people in government and the community who design and provide services so that they can be more inclusive for disabled people.

“Closing the digital divide is something we all need to work together on. Reading the report, consider how to use the findings applied to ongoing or new digital strategies is going to be key to creating the traction needed for disabled people to get the benefits of the internet, connectivity and connection,” confirmed Adam Stapleton, Programme Delivery Manager, Digital Public Service branch at DIA.

The Commerce Commission has published its first set of final decisions on the input methodologies that will apply to fibre fixed-line access services.

“Our input methodologies are designed to incentivise fibre providers to innovate, invest, and improve their efficiency so that consumers receive high quality and affordable broadband services,” said Telecommunications Commissioner Tristan Gilbertson.

The decision covers core areas including cost allocation, capital expenditure, returns to investors and quality – with a further decision to follow on the Commission’s approach to the financial loss asset on 3 November 2020.

As with other regulated sectors, the input methodologies are designed to give fibre providers upfront certainty on the regulatory rules, processes and requirements that will be applied to their businesses, while also counterbalancing their incentives to maximise profits at the expense of consumers.

The Commission will now move into the second and final stage of the process for fibre regulation where it will use the input methodologies framework to set detailed regulatory requirements for each of the regulated fibre networks.

For Chorus, regulation will take the form of a revenue cap that ultimately constrains the price consumers pay for broadband. The regulation will also set the minimum quality standards Chorus must deliver, including customer service, service availability and network performance.

Chorus and the other local fibre companies will also be required to publicly disclose information about their performance, including profits, quality of service and expenditure. This will enable stakeholders, including consumers, to gauge how effectively the regulatory regime is promoting the long-term benefit of end-users.

The Government’s Ultra-Fast Broadband (UFB) initiative was launched in 2009 and now aims to achieve fibre-to-the-premises to 87% of the population (including 1% private fibre) by 2022.

Rural areas of New Zealand are covered by the separate Rural Broadband Initiative which improves broadband coverage to premises in rural New Zealand where it would not be commercially cost-effective to build UFB networks.

The Government’s Crown Infrastructure Partners contracted with four companies through to 2020 to build these fibre networks: Chorus and three local fibre companies (LFCs) – Northpower Fibre, Ultrafast Fibre and Enable Networks.

In November 2018, Parliament amended the Telecommunications Act to require the Commission to develop and implement a new regulatory regime for these fibre providers. The regime will be implemented from the beginning of 2022.

The regime first aims to determine input methodologies. These are the rules, requirements and processes underpinning the regulation. The draft decisions were published in November 2019. This paper sets out the final decisions on what the input methodologies will look like.

Because of the importance of input methodologies, the Act provides for affected parties who submitted during this process to ask the High Court to undertake a merits review of the determinations.

The Commission will use the input methodologies to set the maximum revenue that Chorus can earn from their customers and the minimum quality standards it must meet. This is referred to as price-quality regulation. Additionally, all four fibre network providers will be required to publicly disclose information on their performance, such as on their profitability, revenue, and capital expenditure. This is referred to as information disclosure regulation and is intended to shed a light on their performance for stakeholders and consumers.

Alongside this work, the Commission is also creating safeguards to protect consumers as New Zealand transitions away from the copper phone and broadband network. These safeguards include that fibre is available to be installed at no cost to consumers before Chorus can choose to stop supplying copper services in neighbourhoods.

The Commission is also working on a code so vulnerable consumers have an appropriate way of contacting 111 in the event of a power cut. This is because fibre landlines rely on power in the home and may not work during a power outage.

The final copper withdrawal code will be released in December 2020. The 111 contact code will be released in November 2020.

Data.gov.nz wants to use data more efficiently and effectively to make better choices and provide quick, effortless and smart services to New Zealanders across the entire government spectrum. Improving data content standardisation practices among government organisations will mean that the government is better able to meet the growing expectations of New Zealanders.

Data collected across government has not been designed consistently or managed with all-of-government needs in mind. This means when an attempt is made to share data (for multiple reasons and only where permitted and safe to do so) it can be very difficult to do.

Data content standardisation aims to provide a reliable and consistent basis for the New Zealand data system to maximise the value of data, create a more complete view to inform government policy and investment decisions and enable information sharing and reconciling the data faster and more efficiently.

As the functional lead for data, the Government Chief Data Steward (GCDS) is working across government to co-design, develop, and implement short data content standardisation, tapping into specialised expertise. The GCDS has the authority to set mandatory requirements across government.

Once approved, data content requirements are mandatory for New Zealand government organisations that share electronic data containing the data concept in the data content standard. (Government organisations refers to the State sector Public Service departments and departmental organisations as specified in schedules 1 and 1A of the State Sector Act 1988.)

The government data content standardisation design process also provides opportunities to improve connections across government organisations and increase knowledge about common data problems.

One area that they have made significant strides and progress is in digitising maps. Over the past 150 years, many geological maps of all parts of New Zealand have been made – and most of these maps online can be accessed online thanks to work by GNS Science. For the past 10 years, the team there has been consistently digitising its national archive of historic geological maps.

The geological map archive is one of eight Nationally Significant Collections and Databases cared for by GNS Science, including GNS Science, Web maps, and Nationally Significant Collections and Databases.

Digitising and cataloguing the maps makes them discoverable and accessible. Along with the datasets and GIS layers covering a spectrum of New Zealand geoscience, harvestable metadata means GNS Science can connect to and automatically update data.govt.nz. Moreover, this allows precious historic paper maps themselves to be better preserved.

By making the data more discoverable, even more people and organisations will be able to access and use these data. Currently, GNS Science data are used by local and central governments, researchers within New Zealand and internationally, utility, construction, insurance and exploration industry and more.

Have you noticed how your smartphone knows which way you’re facing when you are looking at a map? That’s because a digital compass using geomagnetic data is working together with GPS, accelerometers and a gyroscope. Digital compasses use global geomagnetic data to compute direction and they are now commonly embedded into consumer devices such as mobile phones.

The New Zealand Geomagnetic Database is hosted by GNS Science. The Database documents the short-term and long-term fluctuations in the Earth’s regional magnetic field from observations collected every second from observatories at Eyrewell, north-west of Christchurch, Scott Base in Antarctica and Apia, Samoa. Data from these observatories are sent to INTERMAGNET, an international organisation that archives and disseminates magnetic observatory data for applications such as digital compass calibration.

University of Waikato associate professors Māui Hudson, Tahu Kukutai, and Te Taka Keegan have secured funding to pursue new research, Tikanga in Technology: Indigenous approaches to transforming data ecosystems.

The team from the University of Waikato were granted $6m funding over four years in the latest Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) Endeavour Fund round. The programme that aims to explore Māori approaches to collective privacy, benefit and governance in a digital environment. The research aims to help increase the benefits to Māori and also reduce data harm.

The indigenous approaches to transforming data ecosystems programme will focus on how Tikanga Māori (customary protocols) and Mātauranga Māori (Indigenous knowledge) can help the shape digital landscape in New Zealand and Māori influence on and its relationship to it. The work will explore how Māori Customary Protocols and Mātauranga Indigenous Knowledge inform the construction of digital identities and create a better understanding of relational responsibilities to data.

The team of researchers will explore tools and processes that can help IT workers understand and incorporate Indigenous perspectives when working on data sets, not only in terms of storage and data processing but also in the creation of algorithms that have the potential for bias. The team’s research will move beyond current efforts to reduce bias in algorithms and explore what it means to ‘decolonise’ algorithms that adversely affect Māori communities.

A founding member of Te Mana Raraunga Māori Data Sovereignty Network and the Global Indigenous Data Alliance alongside Kukutai, Hudson (Whakatohea, Ngā Ruahine, Te Māhurehure) says recent innovations in digital technologies are a double-edged sword for Indigenous peoples.

“Rapid advances in data linkage create a vast potential for improved wellbeing as well as major risks for group exploitation so we need a profoundly different approach to individual data rights and protection – one that recognises collective identities,” says Hudson.

“Our project will look at the tools, processes and mechanisms we can offer the community of developers to enable ethical use and to generate more equitable outcomes for Māori.”

The researchers hope their findings will uncover indigenous perspectives about data management, that can be used to guide data collection, storage, processing and remove unfavourable predispositions from algorithms and programmes.

With research spanning a broad range of population topics from Kiwi demography and census methods to the impacts of colonisation on Indigenous health, Kukutai (Ngāti Tiipa, Ngāti Kinohaku, Te Aupōuri) brings a wealth of knowledge to the programme. She feels it’s more critical now than ever to address the issue of Māori data sovereignty.

“Tikanga in Technology includes projects co-designed with Māori communities, which allows us to help build flax roots data capability and do research that meets their priorities and aspirations,” Kukutai was quoted as saying.

Winner of the Prime Minister’s Supreme Award for Excellence in Tertiary Teaching and an authority on Māori language technologies, Keegan (Waikato-Maniapoto, Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Whakaaue) is looking forward to bringing his experience and passion to the research. Research that would help indigenous perspectives to shape technology, particularly artificial intelligence.

The programme also links Mātauranga Māori and data science and has strong support from stakeholders across Te Ao Māori and Government.

“Ongoing discussions about Māori data sovereignty are occurring beyond central government, but even though the private sector appears to be further behind, I think indigenous data sovereignty is an area where Aotearoa New Zealand can lead the way,” says Hudson.

“We have a global advantage in Indigenous research and, with funding for projects like this, we can continue to optimise this edge to transform data ecosystems so that they are beneficial for indigenous peoples.”

The research team plans to make publicly available a range of tools, frameworks and principles that will promote ethical and equitable engagement, with data grounded in Te Ao Māori world views.