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Capability and succession

A community cannot exercise durable control over a GIS it cannot understand, operate or replace. Investment in people can therefore create more practical sovereignty than investment in infrastructure alone.

Capability is wider than map making​

A sustainable Māori GIS may need skills in:

  • GIS editing and analysis
  • data modelling
  • database administration
  • cloud administration
  • identity and permissions
  • cyber security
  • backup and recovery
  • metadata and records management
  • procurement
  • contract management
  • privacy
  • governance
  • documentation
  • training others

No one person needs to master everything. The organisation needs to know where those capabilities reside and how they will be replaced.

Train for administration as well as use​

Projects often train users to:

  • open a map
  • edit a feature
  • make a PDF

but not to:

  • add and remove users
  • change permissions
  • recover a password
  • restore data
  • identify the authoritative layer
  • export the system
  • renew the subscription
  • migrate the data

Those administrative skills are where practical control often lives.

Build capability into supplier work​

A supplier statement saying training included is too vague.

Specify outcomes such as:

  • two staff can create and remove users
  • two staff can restore a test backup
  • staff can export all core data
  • internal staff understand the schema
  • runbooks are current
  • one internal person has paired with the supplier during administration

Measure handover by capability, not attendance at a workshop.

Rangatahi and continuity​

Wider access to appropriate GIS skills can strengthen continuity. Protection of sensitive information should not inadvertently prevent future Māori practitioners from learning how their own systems work.

Use training datasets, generalised layers and staged permissions where necessary rather than excluding new learners from GIS entirely.

Practitioner note​

Ngā Poutama Matawhenua, Indigenous Mapping Wānanga and other Māori GIS training have shown the value of capability that stays with participants rather than remaining inside a vendor or consultancy. Software changes. A person who understands spatial thinking, provenance, data organisation and safe publication can move between platforms.

That is an important form of resilience.

Succession plan​

For every important system record:

  • primary custodian
  • secondary custodian
  • governance owner
  • platform owner
  • supplier contact
  • location of credentials
  • renewal dates
  • backup process
  • export process
  • documentation location
  • next review date

Review this after staff or governance changes.

Capability before complexity​

If a proposed architecture requires skills the organisation does not have, there are four options:

  1. train people
  2. buy managed support while retaining organisational control
  3. simplify the architecture
  4. do not deploy it yet

Pretending the capability gap does not exist is the worst option.

Last reviewed: 16 August 2026

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