Skip to main content

Working with government and councils

Government is not one actor. Historical Crown surveying, a modern council planning GIS, Toitū Te Whenua LINZ, Stats NZ, Archives New Zealand and environmental agencies have different roles, laws, datasets and relationships with Māori.

A useful Māori GIS approach distinguishes those roles and asks what each organisation or dataset actually contributes to the kaupapa.

The history matters​

Crown surveying and Native Land Court systems show how official spatial records can reshape relationships with whenua. That history still matters when modern systems present cadastral, planning or administrative geography as though it were simply neutral background.

See The survey and the state, Maps are not neutral and Mapping colonisation.

Public spatial infrastructure can also be useful​

Current government spatial infrastructure provides information used in many Māori GIS projects, including:

  • cadastral and property data
  • topographic data
  • aerial imagery
  • official geographic names
  • environmental data
  • census and statistical geography
  • hazards and planning information

The key is to keep each source in its lane. A LINZ parcel is useful for cadastral work. A council hazard layer may be useful for planning or resilience. A Stats NZ geography is useful for statistics. None of those automatically defines whakapapa, rohe, mana whenua or what matters to a hapū.

See GIS data for Aotearoa, Māori land blocks vs parcels and Mana whenua and rohe without hard boundaries.

Mana Ōrite is a useful institutional example​

Stats NZ and Te Kāhui Raraunga have worked under the Mana Ōrite relationship, including publication of 2023 Census Māori descent and iwi-affiliation information through Te Whata. Stats NZ describes Te Whata as a platform tailored specifically by iwi for iwi and records the partnership in its Census material.

This is a useful example because it shows Māori data governance working through an institutional relationship rather than requiring complete separation from Crown-originated data or infrastructure.

Government-held copies can become public records​

Archives New Zealand states that moving records to cloud services does not remove a public organisation's obligations under the Public Records Act 2005 and the mandatory Information and records management standard.

That can matter when Māori organisations share data with an agency. A government-held copy may become part of the agency's official recordkeeping environment, with retention, access and statutory obligations that differ from the original project.

Useful questions before sharing include:

  • Will the copy become an official record?
  • How long is it likely to be retained?
  • Who can access it internally?
  • Can it be used for another statutory function?
  • Could information-access law apply?
  • What happens when the original project ends?
  • Would a smaller or more generalised version do the same job?

See Templates and registers, Open data and research partnerships and Sensitive places.

Privacy is part of the picture​

The Privacy Act protects personal information. Māori data can also include collective, environmental, cultural and whenua information that is not personal information in the ordinary statutory sense.

Privacy therefore answers some important questions without being the whole Māori Data Sovereignty picture.

Information-sharing standards​

The Digital Government Information Sharing Standard has applied to public-service agencies from 1 July 2025 for third-party access to government-held personal information. Its guidance includes a dedicated Māori data section and due-diligence, risk, assurance and agreement requirements.

For Māori organisations, those requirements can be useful when asking an agency to make purpose, storage, security, secondary use and retention visible rather than leaving them as informal assumptions.

Councils and planning​

Council GIS can be very useful for:

  • consent monitoring
  • district and regional planning
  • hazards
  • infrastructure
  • biodiversity
  • freshwater
  • coastal management

Cultural or locally held layers used for one process may not be useful as general-purpose council GIS data. A smaller extract, a buffer, a map service or a time-limited project copy may fit the job better.

Useful things to make clear in a sharing arrangement include:

  • purpose
  • audience or users
  • spatial detail
  • whether public publication is part of the work
  • expected analyses or derived data
  • retention
  • onward sharing
  • what happens when the project ends

See Publishing maps, Publishing maps with sensitive locations and Access and security.

Practitioner note​

Māori GIS work with government agencies often goes well when everyone is clear about which dataset is authoritative for which narrow purpose.

A council parcel layer, an iwi cultural layer and a historical Treaty map can all be useful at the same time while answering different questions. Problems begin when one source quietly becomes the master representation of another organisation's knowledge.

Sources​

Last verified: 26 August 2026

Last updated on