Hira is a te reo Māori word that was chosen because it means "to have a significant bearing on future events" or "to have a widespread effect".

eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

This reflects the important role Hira will play in laying the foundation for a digitally enabled health and disability system that is people-centred, accessible, joined up and responsive to the needs of all New Zealanders.

To ensure Hira helps improve Māori health outcomes and targets equity challenges, Hira will be co-designed with Māori in a way that embraces te ao Māori ideals and practices.

The Ministry of Health has established Te Rangapū Tiriti partnership group, which will provide oversight and governance of this co-design work and contribute to decision-making on the overall Hira programme.

Te Rangapū will partner with the Ministry's Digital Enablement Oversight Group and the Hira programme team to develop a joint roadmap, objectives and initiatives that will be captured in a Māori Digital Enablement Equity Plan.

Within this governance framework, the Hira research and discovery team has been investigating what co-design between Māori and the Ministry could look like.

Following consultation with Māori staff within the Ministry, the team has proposed using the concept of 'nga punga' or 'anchor stones' to guide co-design activities.

The proposed anchor stones will hold us steady but also give us flexibility – we can pull in the anchor stones and move our waka to a different area, changing our direction when needed.

The anchor stones also allow us to adapt to the changing environment and be responsive. Depending on what we need to achieve our goal, we can select anchor stones that suit who we are working with and what we want to create together.

The anchor stones proposed for Hira co-design work are:

Whakapono - Turning our words into actions

Whai wahitanga - Creating time and space to develop our partnership

Uaranga hononga - Building trusted relationships together

Hangai - Being reflective and responsive to what is needed

Aroha ki te tangata, Aroha ki te whenua - With aroha for both tangata and whenua.

The Ministry will work with Māori and wānanga to test the proposed anchor stones and refine the proposed co-design approach.

This mahi will be combined with the programme’s partnership governance model and both will be tested with Māori, iwi, hapū, whānau and co-design experts.

What we've developed so far is just a starting point that will change with input from Māori and our iwi partners. It’s going to be a really different process to what we’ve done before.

It’s going to be a discussion about how we can best work together, and how Māori and iwi would like co-design to work.