Why We Needed to Retell the Story of Computing

When we started this work, we weren’t trying to retrofit sustainability or decolonisation into our existing computing teaching. We knew that would never be enough. Instead, we asked a more foundational question: What does a decolonised computing professional look like? Not just in theory, but in lived, everyday practice.

That question led us down a path that ultimately became our recent paper, “Story Re-Telling: A Decolonial Approach to Sustainable ICT”. Together with Mawera Karetai, Ruth Myers, and Jamie Vaughan, we developed a method grounded in Indigenous storytelling and decolonial practice—not as an add-on to the computing curriculum, but as a starting point for reimagining the profession itself.

We began by listening to Indigenous stories—stories like The Boy, an account of a young Māori man failed by systems that claim to support him. Then, in partnership, we retold those stories. We imagined what it would look like if computing professionals were part of the solution: embedded in the community, guided by kaupapa Māori values, practising tino rakatirataka (self-determination) and kaitiakitaka (guardianship).

From these re-tellings, we built a five-stage Decolonisation Maturity Model, ranging from Avoid (complicit in colonial systems) to Passion (working in authentic, Indigenous-led practice). We embedded these into a full Professional Framework of Practice for sustainable ICT—something our field has long needed.

This wasn’t a tidy process. It was iterative, messy, and deeply reflective. But that’s the nature of transformation. And ultimately, it gave us a practical and hopeful way forward: a framework not only for how we teach and research, but for how we live as computing professionals.

Computing shapes the world. It always has. The only question is—whose world does it shape, and how?

If you’re ready to explore what a decolonised future for computing might look like, I invite you to start with this decolonised professional framework of practice for computing: https://hdl.handle.net/10652/6794.

Slides: https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/story-re-telling-a-decolonial-approach-to-sustainable-ict/281099980

Paper: Mann, S., Karetai, M., Myers, R., & Vaughan, J. (2025). Decolonised Professional Framework of Practice for Computing. ICT4S 2025, Dublin.