What we still do not know
The evidence base is strong on Māori authority, relationships, ethics and the history of mapping. It is much thinner on what happens to Māori GIS systems five, ten or twenty years after they are built. This page keeps those gaps visible rather than filling them with confident assumptions.
Highest-priority gaps
| Gap | Why it matters | Priority |
|---|---|---|
| Five-, ten- and twenty-year survival of Māori GIS projects | launch success says little about long-term usability | very high |
| Real hapū GIS total cost of ownership | architecture debates lack Māori-specific longitudinal financial evidence | very high |
| Administrator succession failures | practical control can disappear when one person leaves | very high |
| Consultant exit and account ownership | contracts directly affect practical rangatiratanga | very high |
| GIS-specific implementation of the Māori Data Governance Model | current Māori governance guidance is broader than geospatial architecture | very high |
| Māori spatial-sensitivity taxonomy | public/private is often too crude | high |
| Metadata leakage from Māori GIS portals | technically plausible but little Māori-specific empirical evidence exists | high |
| Cloud-provider backup deletion | terms vary and are difficult for small organisations to evaluate | high |
| Māori GIS cyber incidents | little public case literature is available | high |
| Long-term preservation of StoryMaps and web maps | interactive applications are harder to preserve than datasets | high |
| AI spatial inference over Māori cultural data | capability is advancing faster than governance evidence | very high |
| Costs of over-restriction | protection is better studied than lost benefit from excessive restriction | medium-high |
| Effects on rangatahi access | protection can unintentionally reduce transmission and capability | medium-high |
| Longitudinal SaaS versus open-source experience | strong opinions exist, comparative Māori evidence is weak | very high |
We do not have a catalogue of failed Māori GIS systems
Public research provides numerous examples of successful or promising Māori mapping projects and broader evidence about capability and trust problems. It does not provide a defensible list of Māori organisations whose GIS systems failed after funding ended.
Do not invent one.
The absence of published cases does not mean failures never occur. It means the evidence is insufficient to name organisations responsibly.
Cost evidence is modelling, not observation
The Ten-year cost models are planning models based on realistic architecture and labour assumptions. They are not the results of following five hapū GIS programmes for a decade.
A valuable future research programme would document:
- annual platform cost
- volunteer and staff hours
- consultant support
- hardware replacement
- migration events
- outages
- funding changes
- user numbers
- survival after staff turnover
We need more post-project research
Case studies often end when the new tool launches. Useful longitudinal questions are:
- Is it still used?
- Who administers it now?
- Have data been migrated?
- Is the original community still able to access the information?
- Are licences still paid?
- Did the project create internal capability?
- Was knowledge returned from researchers and consultants?
- Can the system survive its original champion leaving?
AI is changing the boundary of what can be inferred
There is strong evidence that AI can infer location and automate feature extraction. There is much less Māori-specific empirical work on how those capabilities affect wāhi tapu, cultural landscapes, historic maps, environmental data and other Māori spatial information.
This should remain an active research area rather than a page written once and forgotten.
Contributions and corrections
This resource should be revised when better evidence becomes available. Useful contributions include:
- published evaluations
- iwi or hapū public reports
- peer-reviewed papers
- public procurement and governance guidance
- documented platform migrations
- transparent cost cases
- corrections to technical claims
Sensitive or confidential project failures should not be published merely to make the site look comprehensive.
Editorial rule
Where evidence ends, say so. Separate:
- established fact
- evidence-supported interpretation
- practitioner experience
- site recommendation
- open research question
That distinction is part of the resource's data-governance practice, not just an editorial preference.
Related pages
Last reviewed: 16 August 2026