Navigating the tailings data maze: A design science approach to developing a public sector entrepreneurship compass for mining SMEs

Effective management of tailings storage facilities, given their recurrent and harmful failures, depends on sophisticated data monitoring. However, a persistent digital divide creates an entrenched institutional problem: resource-constrained small and medium-sized enterprises have limited capability to adopt monitoring technologies. When coupled with data fragmentation and limited regulatory visibility, traditional enforcement and incentive-based policies lose their effectiveness. Public Sector Entrepreneurship (PSE) is proposed for such situations. However, while research has been prominent in retrospectively explaining the antecedents and outcomes of PSE, the actual design of tangible solutions (what to build and how) remains a black box. We ask: How can PSE facilitate the development of accessible digital solutions to enhance the safety and compliance of these facilities? Following a Design Science methodology and adopting a practitioner-academic team model with Chile's national regulator, we developed and validated "Tailing Closure". This digital platform artifact consolidates complex technical and regulatory requirements into a unified, accessible solution, including a failure occurrence potential index. Our research makes two primary contributions. First, we advance PSE theory by demonstrating a replicable mechanism through which public actors can catalyze a shift in regulatory technology from enforcement to enablement. Second, in response to the call for actionable guidelines, we contribute to a nascent design theory articulated as a set of generalizable design principles. These principles articulate how Design Science can be mobilized to develop shared technological artifacts that help address grand challenges by enabling collaboration and accountability across capability-divided, institutionally fragmented environments. • Enablement-based PSE, through DS, to tackle entrenched institutional problems and democratize access for technology to SMEs. • Tailing Closure consolidates regulatory and technical TSF data in one platform and validates with 113 TSFs. • Prescriptive design principles for regulatory digital platforms are advanced: Regulator-first, Data Traceability, Explicit Gap Management, Adaptive Modularization.