Why Governance is good

Cate McLaurin describes how HackIT (Hackney Council’s digital delivery group) approaches governance.

Governance is three main things:

• Coordinate what we’re doing and stop doing stuff, so we can go faster
• Focus our people and money, so we can deliver what matters
• Answer the question “How’s it going?”

Some other key points: HackIT adopted existing standards from other teams “because we know they work” (I’ve both scratched my head and nodded appreciatively at digital delivery groups that create their own standards; I see the value both in adopting others’ and in creating your own); HackIT made the team the core unit of most decisionmaking.