The Service Innovation Lab (the Lab) works in an open and transparent way. We publish our code, reports and insights for public reuse, and to help us test and get feedback to continually drive increased integrity of the work and outcomes over time.
When it comes to cultural content, we take a more nuanced approach because we are not the source of content and concepts derived from other cultures, and we want to ensure the dignity, respect and sovereignty of those peoples, ideas and mātauranga is preserved.
As a cross-agency function trying to improve public services for New Zealand Aotearoa, the Lab team actively tries to understand and engage with the unique context of New Zealand Aotearoa. We bring the values and practices into our work where appropriate, as well as strive to meet the unique responsibilities of our public services regarding the Treaty of Waitangi. This means sometimes content is created which is clearly derived from the knowledge and mātauranga Maori of iwi, hapū and whānau in Aotearoa.
We sought the permissions of Te Hiku Media to use the Kaitiakitanga License for cultural content developed with the Lab. We will continue to use relevant open source licences for our general work, usually MIT licencing for code so they can be used as reference implementations, and Creative Commons By Attribution licences for content.
The Service Innovation Lab approach will henceforth be:
- We will have a disclaimer at the beginning of all cultural content developed with the Lab:
- Please note that this content is derived from the knowledge and mātauranga Māori of iwi, hapū and whānau in Aotearoa, and is subject to certain restrictions to protect the integrity and mana of the people involved, their whakapapa, and the cultural principles as they apply. Please ensure you abide by the licencing requirements, and we would appreciate if you help us by letting us know if you see this content misused.
- Licence: the default licence supported for cultural content is the Kaitiakitanga License, with permission from Te Hiku Media. This does not exclude other licences being used in the future.
- The licence and attribution will be embedded within relevant content, such as having the licence wording or reference hardcoded into an image, report or video, so that the conditions of use are not accidentally lost.
- This approach will be applied to cultural content developed with the Lab, defined as content of any sort that is mātauranga Māori, as defined by the person responsible for its development, in line with tikanga Māori.
- Cultural content will be stored in a dedicated folder of the Lab’s github repository with the licence information clearly articulated to help ensure any users of the content know the usage restrictions.
In our next blog post, you'll be able to see our approach put into practice: Kainga and Renting a Property.
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The content in this blog has been drafted in collaboration with Pia Andrews.
