Kia ora,
This month’s Digital Trust Hui Taumata 2026 opened with a standout joint keynote pairing Drummond Reed with Dr Karaitiana Taiuru, bringing global trust architecture together with tikanga-informed digital governance and Māori data sovereignty.
One of the quieter outcomes from this is now travelling well beyond Aotearoa. Drummond Reed has circulated a strategy paper to partners of the First Person Cooperative, an international effort to build a trust layer for the internet. It includes the section, Lessons from New Zealand.
The lesson is structural. The prevailing international assumption has been that digital trust will consolidate into a small number of global networks, much as payments did. What Drummond took from his time here was a different model: many self-governing networks, interoperating as peers, with none required to cede sovereignty to another. The paper describes how a Māori network could sit alongside Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch networks; complementary and interoperable, with none subordinate.
This was informed by Dr Karaitiana Taiuru’s kōrero: sovereignty is not a permission granted by a framework. It is a property the framework must be built to preserve.
While DINZ holds no position on the initiative, and any Māori participation must be Māori led. But it is worth noting a conversation in Aotearoa has helped shape the design of an international system.
This month provided a number of ideas to consider:
- Dr Pramod Varma delivered a powerful Hui keynote with a question every foundational project should answer. Read more here.
- Christopher Bramwell’s Hui keynote made one point clear – technology alone does not determine digital identity outcomes, governance does. Read more here.
- Maria Robertson posed the challenge at our Hui – how can New Zealand once again become the country the world looks to for trusted identity as a core part of its social infrastructure.
- Our 2026 Digital Trust Survey initial results are in with five things New Zealanders told us. Explore the findings.
- The Online Safety Bill poses a critical infrastructure question. Read more here.
Finally, a word on the wider environment. Momentum inside government has slowed as the election approaches, with work at the GDDA and the Public Service Commission largely on hold. We read this pause as an opening rather than a setback. It is the right moment to reset direction and resourcing across government and industry, so that whoever forms the next government inherits a programme ready to accelerate rather than one to rebuild.
That thinking runs through our new strategy, which we finalise this week. I look forward to sharing it with you soon.
Ngā mihi nui,
Andy Higgs
Executive Director,
Digital Identity New Zealand
Hui Taumata Highlights
Open Layer or Closed Platform?
If Aotearoa is serious about digital public infrastructure (DPI), every foundational project should answer one question: does this project create an open layer others can build on, or a closed platform others must integrate with?
Ngā mihi to Dr Pramod Varma
Dr Pramod Varma, former chief architect of Aadhaar, UPI and India Stack and now co-founder of Networks for Humanity, delivered a powerful Hui keynote. His focus was structural rather than technical.
Governance is the Missing Question
Christopher Bramwell’s Hui keynote made one point clear: technology alone does not determine digital identity outcomes, governance does. Utah’s model offers timely questions for Aotearoa on individual control, a duty of loyalty, and the public-interest guardrails New Zealand needs.