By governance I mean three plain things: who has authority, who makes which decisions, and who answers for them.
Most of the trouble I have seen with data platforms, digital programmes and now AI was not a technology problem. It was one of those three questions left unanswered or answered in the wrong order. That is the argument of this newsletter. Everything else is evidence for it.
Who is writing
I am a governance practitioner and doctoral researcher. I'm a Fellow of the Chartered Governance Institute, working across the Pacific and Oceania.
I’ve worked in enterprise architecture and digital infrastructure, advised boards and public institutions, and worked with data governance in Pacific small island settings, where statutory and customary authority overlap. Much of that was national-scale work: alongside a Board of Directors through a two-year infrastructure transformation, advising government agencies in New Zealand, and working with NGOs and commercial organisations internationally on digital and data strategy development.
I am completing a Doctor of Business Administration at the University of Otago on a governance framework for data collaboratives, hence the coffee!
I write as a practitioner, in my own name. These are personal views. They are not the position of any employer or institution.
The argument so far, in six posts
Before I Had a Word For It. Governance came before delivery. I first met it in a software certification.
Whoever’s Closest, Decides. Authority is a design choice. Orientation comes before initiative.
It Was Never a Technology Problem. What we call technical failure is often an authority and sequencing failure in disguise.
The Year I Stopped Believing in Org Charts. Authority is built between institutions, continuously, not granted once.
Not a Federation of Platforms. Who has standing to decide across institutions that do not report to each other.
The Paper That Asks the Board to Decide Nothing. What the board table looks like from the adviser’s chair.
If you only read two, read Whoever’s Closest, Decides and Not a Federation of Platforms.
What comes next
Each essay keeps the same case-led voice. Each end with a short box of questions for directors and executives. And each pattern claim carries a label for how well the evidence supports it: early observation, approaching confirmed, or confirmed pattern.
What this is not
It is not a vendor pitch, a compliance checklist or a technical guide. It is one practitioner’s attempt to say, plainly and with evidence, what boards and leaders need to settle before they build.
If any of this matches something you're working through, or you think I've got it wrong, I'd like to hear it. Reply to this email or leave a comment.