To explore, promote and support a high integrity national digital future
about
Est. July 2021
Vision
Our vision is to create a high veracity digital nation that reflects and amplifies a desired quality of life here in Aotearoa New Zealand
Purpose
Veracity Lab facilitates deep and inclusive conversations across all
areas of society about our digital future, and provides capabilities to
incubate and undertake research and development work at the cutting
edge of values-based and human-centered technology.
Partnership model
Veracity lab will provide the objective and safe environment to
facilitate the following partnerships:
Indigenous
Industry
Research
Education
Developer
Government
People
Leadership
Markus Luczak-Roesch: Co-director, Associate Professor, Victoria University of Wellington
Māui Hudson: Co-director, Associate Professor, University of Waikato
Brendan Hoare: Associate Director, Buy Pure New Zealand
Research Team
Kelly Blincoe: Dr, University of Auckland
Tim Miller: Victoria University of Wellington
Steve Reeves: Professor, University of Waikato
Jens Dietrich: Associate Professor, Victoria University of Wellington
David Eyers: Associate Professor, University of Otago
Kevin Shedlock: Victoria University of Wellington
Matthias Galster: Associate Professor, University of Canterbury
Stephen Cranefield: Professor, University of Otago
Jane Li: Project Coordinator and Research Assistant, Victoria University of Wellington
Advisory Board
Karyne Rogers: Senior Scientist at GNS Science
James Noble: Professor of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Victoria University of Wellington
Ben Tairea: Managing Director and Kaiwhakahaere, CEO of Āhau
Richman Wee: Academic Research Manager for the New Zealand Law Foundation (NZLF), University of Waikato
Supported by
case studies
Indigenous data
Local Contexts (www.localcontexts.org) supports the application of Traditional Knowledge (TK) Labels and Biocultural (BC) Labels to datasets to ensure information relating to provenance and cultural authority is maintained in the digital records associated with mātauranga and taonga. Maintaining the integrity and trustworthiness of this metadata in Te Ao Matihiko (Digital World) is a key challenge which the Veracity Lab is helping us address.
Natural products
We will be exploring with the organic community in Aotearoa New Zealand and internationally how we can take a 40 year old internationally recognised environmental standard process from analogue to digital using veracity. This is of particular interest to Aotearoa New Zealand as we are in the midst of creating regulating organic through our Organic Products Bill.
Contestable AI
Artificial Intelligence (AI) will undoubtedly enter more and more areas
of people's daily lives. From loan and insurance claim decision to
autonomous machines in farming, AI is already in use in many areas
today. An important question is, how do humans intervene when they
disagree with or doubt the actions that are triggered by AI? How do we
make sure actions of AI are reliably documented and understandable? Who
is accountable? Veracity Lab is looking at these questions from the
perspective of the national digital infrastructure needed to ensure
humans can live well alongside an ever increasing amount of AI in their
environment.
We follow an agile process of ideation, requirements analysis and specification
between the Veracity Lab Research Team and stakeholders that can join
the Veracity Lab Partnerships at any time to bring
in new research and development challenges of high priority for a high
veracity digital nation into the Veracity Lab.
Veracity Lab + TeLENZ ‘Leading Minds’ Webinar Series
Tuesday 10th May 2022, 5 pm: Join us for a webinar titled "Rules as Code"
In this webinar, researchers, policy makers and technologists will be discussing (1) the role of rules of code and related work undertaken in NZ and overseas; Potential for initiatives to be trialled in NZ and (2) multi-disciplinary and cross-sectoral collaborations to explore specific use cases.
Speakers: Nadia Webster (Manager, Data & Insights, Wellington City Council & (2020—2021) Innovation Lead, Smart Council), Hamish Fraser ( Co-investigator, NZ Law Foundation-funded research on ‘Legislation as Code for NZ’ & Product Architect, Developer, Wellington CC)
Zoom Link: Free to join in and Zoom link will be generated after registration here
Veracity Webinar Series
Wednesday 30th March 2022, 5 pm: Join us for a webinar titled "Demystifying Blockchain"
In this webinar practitioners and researchers working in blockchain will discuss what (1) they may be useful for; (2) may be achieved equally or better using other technologies; (3) the principles embedded in blockchain technology actually are. Facilitated discussion will explore when and how blockchains may be of use, and when and why they may not.
Speakers: Robert O'Brien (Distributed Systems Software Architect, yümi), David Eyers (Associate Professor, University of Otago), Walter Langelaar (artist/academic in Media Design, Victoria University of Wellington), Chris Claridge (Chair, Trust Alliance New Zealand)
November 2-4, 2021: Veracity Lab led a series of open discussions exploring how the Government's 'Digital Strategy for Aotearoa' can trigger a positive repositioning of our digital future and to put people in control of what it looks like.
Below are the recordings from the webinars.
