USING SCIENCE TO RECONNECT

Parininihi ki Waitotara (PKW) has teamed up with two universities to investigate and develop ways to find more than 5,000 of its missing shareholders.

The Incorporation currently has 10,300 shareholders but it only holds the contact details for 45% of them, according to Mitchell Ritai, PKW General Manager Shareholder Engagement.

“While several organisations throughout the country are working on developing solutions, PKW is the first to use the National Science Challenge’s Science for Technological Innovation challenge as a platform to achieve such a solution,” says Mitchell.

“It is so important that we connect with those shareholders to help them with issues around land succession, opportunities for economic development, maintenance of whānau relationships and distribution of the $4.7 million we currently hold in unclaimed dividends”.

From housing to healthcare and environmental sustainability, the National Science Challenge aims to tackle the biggest issues and opportunities facing Aotearoa. The initiative also brings together the country’s top scientists to work collaboratively across disciplines, institutions and borders to achieve their objectives.

Mitchell said it was exciting to have both the University of Auckland and Victoria University of Wellington support PKW with the project.

“Each university is taking a totally different approach with Auckland looking at an analytics approach and Victoria looking at a social network approach.”

The analytics approach has developed data mining tools using novel name-matching algorithms to search a range of data sources to make connections and reveal patterns. This was supported with a new optical character recognition tool to digitise poor quality records.

“Auckland University is investigating the development of innovative tools that will allow us to automatically search for our missing shareholders and provide a certain level of validity that it may be the same person we are looking for. PKW then utilise this information to reach out to this person to confirm they are who we are looking for and then we can re-connect them back to the kaupapa of PKW.

“And rather than us entering 5,000 names manually, the tools they have developed will do this automatically and work throughout the day and night.”

Victoria University are focusing on social network analysis approach modelling whānau and hapū relationships through a communitybased lens to connect large data sets for use in prototypes using interactive tools.

“Victoria has adopted the approach that everyone is not really lost or missing, that they all belong to the PKW community but for one reason or another we have lost contact. Their approach crunches enormous data sets that provide another layer of data analysis that helps to verify an individual” Mitchell said.

The project is at the end of its first phase and has been recently approved to transition into the next phase of development for another three years. Prototypes have been developed and are being tested, but there is still more work to do.

“This is a six year project that will hopefully provide us with a solution that will benefit every generation of PKW shareholders into the future.” says Mitchell.

Earlier this year, PKW engaged Rere- No-A-Rangi Pope, who is completing a Masters Degree in Software Development from Victoria University, as an intern to develop a small-scale solution.

Above: Rere-No-A-Rangi Pope (Ngāruahine)

“I was asked to develop a web app to support kaimahi in the PKW office who deal with the shareholder register,” said Rere-No-A-Rangi.

The opportunity also allowed the 25-year-old to reconnect with his iwi, Ngāruahine, who he descends from through his mother.

“I’ve always been passionate about solving problems using technology and the internship allowed me to get back to where my mum comes from, so I am really honoured to have been able to help my people.”

Rere-No-A-Rangi said he was excited about the larger project to find missing shareholders because it would benefit not just Taranaki and Whanganui whānau but Māori throughout the world.

“This project is huge and could be extremely beneficial for te ao Māori. It’s exciting times.”