The final speaker in this AANZCA 2024 conference session is my QUT colleague Bernadette Hyland-Wood, whose interest is in the co-design of an Indigenous client-centric, community-focussed project. This builds on her background in advocacy and development for open data sharing initiatives.
The project works with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community Health Service (ATSICHS) in Brisbane to develop an insights platform that fosters agency amongst clients of the service; this, therefore, centrally draws on Indigenous data – that is, data collected both on, from, and by Indigenous people, whether collected intentionally or not. It works towards Indigenous data sovereignty: the right of Indigenous peoples to exercise ownership over Indigenous data.
Such Indigenous data sovereignty requires Indigenous data governance: the right to decide what, how, and why Indigenous data are collected. This must also follow the AIATSIS Code of Ethics. The present project operationalises this through co-design with Indigenous people, aiming for a client-centric, community-driven process that involves telling, enacting, and making as part of the cooperative and collaborative platform design – and this in turn requires trusted collaborative relationships amongst participants.
Its process involves iterative stages of design thinking, oriented towards innovation, with opportunities for reflection built in. This started from the ATSICHS Data Governance Framework, built in Indigenous data sovereignty principles, and carefully considered questions of access and scope. It follows FAIR and CARE principles, incorporates various data ethics guidances, and learns from Open Data Governance Frameworks that have been successful in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand in the past.
Hopefully, this process will result in a first-ever client-centric and community-driven insights platform. But it cannot work to university timelines; instead, must be adaptable to the needs and timelines of the communities it serves.
