Architecture decisions
ADR 0008: Indigenous Data Governance is an authority boundary
- Status: Proposed
- Date: 2026-10-03
- Approval needed: an appropriately constituted and paid Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander governance body (see OD-014 and OD-015)
Context
Legal access or an open licence does not establish cultural authority, consent, or permission for model training, guardrail evaluation, redistribution, or external judging. Technical proxy inference can also create discriminatory harm.
Decision
Establish a paid Indigenous governance body with approval, veto, and stop-use authority before collecting or using relevant community-derived data. Track item-level provenance, authority, purpose, consent, permitted uses, withdrawal, retention, redistribution, and deletion lineage. Prohibit inference of Indigeneity from names, language, accent, appearance, postcode, location, or other proxies.
Consequences
- Engineering cannot approve relevant datasets or releases by itself.
- Some data remains community-controlled and private even when technically usable.
- Release workflows need governance gates and enforceable withdrawal/stop-use.
- This ADR records the required authority model but cannot accept itself; the governance body must shape and approve its operating details.