Open‐Source Tools for Building Data‐Driven, Sovereignty‐Permitting Web Apps

Public domain or access-controlled web apps provide a simple and relatively cheap way to increase the accessibility of information within data resources. Modern data environments, especially those subject to Māori Data Sovereignty (MDSov) constraints, face technical challenges balancing data security and privacy with accessibility and collective benefit. We are exploring how modern web technologies, including open-source tools such as JavaScript, can be combined with the data analytics software R to build modern data-driven web applications with embedded data sovereignty capability. The Rserve software allows JavaScript to communicate with R, and we are developing new technology that enables deployment within diverse data environments in ways that align with MDSov. This approach embeds technical solutions to the challenges of implementing MDSov principles within a data environment, creating data systems that are engineered to enable data owners to control data access, sharing and use.