ML-Powered Insights for $60M in Language Funding

Our client is a Māori language agency operating in the media sector, responsible for promoting Māori language and culture by funding the production and distribution of te reo Māori content, Māori cultural content, and Māori music to diverse audiences. Providing grants and funding worth over $60 million annually, the organisation was striving to become data-driven.

The core challenge was twofold: the client needed to make informed funding decisions, and to understand the impact that funded content had on language revitalisation. The ability to create data insights efficiently and securely mattered greatly for both objectives, yet the organisation had constrained budgets and disparate data sources spread across multiple systems.

On top of this, the media landscape was shifting quickly. Content consumption was moving from conventional platforms such as television and radio towards social media channels including YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook, and the client's existing data capability could not keep pace.

DataSing and the client established a partnership model in which we became an extension of their data team. Working with the chief data scientist, we co-developed the overall data strategy and a roadmap mapped directly to the organisation's goals.

We assessed the client's technical and insight capabilities and defined an initial set of use cases. From there, we built a foundational data platform including storage, warehousing, ingestion, and machine learning components. We designed and built a refined 'Content Creator' data layer to cleanse, transform, and integrate complex source data, presenting a single unified view to leadership.

We established design patterns for how data would be ingested and managed throughout the platform, built automated pipelines for key data sources, and provided ongoing management of the ingestion layer. As content consumption shifted towards social media, we added audience metrics from YouTube and other platforms quickly, without affecting service costs.

We provided input into the organisation's information security posture, drafting Privacy Impact Assessments and completing risk assessments. We also provided training and advice to the analyst teams as they adopted the new tools.

We provisioned an initial data platform for business use within six weeks of contract signing, including all necessary assurances and controls around information security.

Our project leadership outputs, including the data strategy roadmap, have been used to inform board members of the organisation's data capabilities direction. Dashboards from the platform are now standard content for monthly board packs and guide decision-making at the highest level.

Since our governance forums were initiated, we have maintained zero platform outages or periods of unavailability. Our continuous innovation model has led to the introduction and use of machine learning capabilities within the first year of service.

We have been working in partnership with this client since 2021, and our model allows both parties to take on new technical capabilities as they are needed and to keep innovating as we deliver our services.