You own the system
Data, configuration and brand, in open formats, exportable at any time. Written into the architecture and into every contract.
Collaborate
Your system. Built with you. Maintained with you.
Datastake designs, builds and maintains digital systems for the hardest places to collect data. They stand up fast because they run on a shared, proven framework. They stay yours because ownership is written into the architecture and the contract.
The offer
How far does your system reach?
This shapes scope and cost more than any other choice, and it is the one most often underestimated. It is not how many screens you build. It is how many distinct, customised interfaces your system has to provide, one for each kind of participant it serves: a focused set, many that exchange, or infrastructure open to a whole field. That drives the build, and it sets the rate.
A focused set of interfaces
An application
A defined set of customised interfaces for the roles your work involves, a coordinator and its implementers, say, all within one initiative. There may be several partner organisations and many screens, but it stays one coherent system. Run your own operation on it, or build a product on the framework and sell it as your own.
Standard rateMany interfaces, exchanging
An ecosystem
Many kinds of participant, each with its own customised interface, exchanging trusted data across organisational lines. It is the number and variety of those interfaces, and the trust between them, that makes it an ecosystem. An industry body bringing its members onto common infrastructure is the classic case.
Standard rate, larger buildOpen to a whole field
A public good
Open infrastructure for a whole sector or community rather than any single organisation: a public registry, civil-society monitoring, a shared data commons. Often funded and sustained by several stakeholders at once. App-scale or full ecosystem, what defines it is who it is for.
Preferred rateThe big jumpWhy an ecosystem costs more than the sum of its parts, and what it wins
The cost is not the screens, or even the extra interfaces on their own. It is the exchange between parties who do not automatically trust each other: the channels that carry data with its source intact, the checks that reconcile information from members with different incentives, the permissions that decide who sees what in the shared view, and the governance the convener needs to run it all. Every feature effectively has to work twice, once for the member and once for the shared layer.
The prize: becoming the reference layer.
Whoever builds the shared infrastructure for a field first tends to become its trusted reference. A sector sustains one such layer, not three. That is why the boundary should be drawn deliberately, and why an established position is worth protecting: a system already trusted in its space holds exactly the kind of authority an ecosystem is built to win.
Public goods are actively favoured here. The further a system reaches, the more it strengthens a shared, sovereign network that everyone connected to it benefits from, which is why partners are sought to build, expand and sustain them.
How it is priced
You pay for the distance from what already exists.
The closer your need is to what the framework already does, the faster and cheaper it is. The further away, the more it takes. Five steps, from already-built to breaking new ground. Move along the track to see what each involves.
What already existsNew ground
Included
The foundation every system starts on
In every buildYou do not start from an empty page. Every system arrives with the parts that take longest to get right.
User and account management, structured data capture, data ownership and provenance, sharing on your terms, dashboards and maps, a public web presence, and pooled security, hosting and one-click export. On its own this would be months of work to commission elsewhere.
User & account managementStructured data captureProvenanceDashboards & mapsA public front doorSecurity & export
Effort: low
The second time is cheaper. Anything built new for one client tends to drop a step for the next: what was a full build becomes a simple configuration. You benefit from everything built before you.
How an engagement starts
From mess to system, in three steps.
Step one
Diagnostic
A structured assessment of your data landscape, your gaps, and your readiness. You get a clear, prioritised report on what is unstructured, what is broken, and what to fix first, built on real experience in your sector, not a generic maturity checklist.
Step two
Transition support
Practical help getting from spreadsheets and scattered files to a structured foundation, the groundwork that has to exist before AI or analytics can help you at all.
Step three
Build
When you are ready, Datastake designs, builds, and maintains a system you own, on a shared framework, connected to the wider ecosystem.
Then it is yours
Own it. Keep Datastake close. Stay free to leave.
Maintained by the team that built it
Maintenance is the promise, not the small print. Choose the level that fits: keep it running, keep it improving, or keep it growing. Your counterpart in year five is the team that built week one.
An exit path, not an expectation
Most partners are not technology companies and do not plan to hire engineering teams. The point of ownership is leverage and continuity: Datastake stays on to operate and improve the system, while the data, configuration and exit path remain yours.
Start here
Name the problem. You will get the shortest path to solving it.
Most people do not arrive knowing exactly what to build. Walk through a few questions about your situation, and the shape of the work takes form. Or just describe it in your own words.
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