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A MG Services worker conducting fee for service work. Kununurra, Western Australia. Image, Wayne Quilliam.
Every group of people needs to look at its governance at some stage to start thinking about developing new processes, rules or structures.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been working for years to reclaim governing authority and self-determining responsibility for their nations and communities. Many have had to tackle hard questions such as:
In this part of the toolkit you’ll find practical answers to these questions, together with information, ideas and tools to help you get started on reviewing your governance, and identifying the assets and strengths you can build on.
The Muntjiltjarra Wurrgumu Group (MWG) was awarded Highly Commended Category B in the 2014 Indigenous Governance Awards. Here MWG members Regina Ashwin and Stacey Petterson outline how the MWG came together as a representative group as part of the Wiluna Regional Partnership Agreement. The group conducted a survey to understand what was important from a local perspective.
In this clip Yiriman elders and cultural bosses John Watson and Joe Brown talk about getting their project started. Yiriman, winner of the Indigenous Governance Awards in 2012, is a youth program run by the elders of four Kimberley language groups. Culture and care for Country are used to instil young people with a sense of identity and purpose.
“What’s holding you back? Some of it is other people and governments. But perhaps some of it is you. Identify the problems that you need to deal with—and take responsibility for them …
You can’t do everything at once. But you can start somewhere …
The first steps may be big, or they may be small. The point is to begin.”(Stephen Cornell, ‘Starting and sustaining strong indigenous governance’, presentation to Building Effective Indigenous Governance conference, 4–7 November 2003, Jabiru, Northern Territory)
Strengthening and rebuilding your governance is a journey. You cannot fix everything at once and there are no perfect ‘good governance’ solutions. Rebuilding your governance could require big, immediate changes or small, progressive ones.
So it’s important to be open to different ideas—to see what works best in your circumstances and to experiment with ways of developing solutions that are culturally credible as well as practically effective.
It’s also good to be flexible because what works best now might not work so well in 10 years.
To tackle your governance issues you will need:
Someone has to lead the way, but you also have to keep your nation and community members with you on the journey. The process may challenge the existing vested interests within your own community and in your external environment. So try to be inclusive and keep as many people as possible involved in the process.
The Institute for Urban Indigenous Health (IUIH) was a Finalist in Category A of the 2014 Indigenous Governance Awards. Here Director of Operations and Communications Jody Currie and CEO Adrian Carson explains how the IUIH came together to create a regional solution to common goals, and some of the challenges that arose during this process.
Western Desert Nganampa Walytja Palyantjaku Tjutaku Aboriginal Corp Inc (WDNWPT) CEO Sarah Brown and Board Director Marlene Spencer talk about getting their organisation started and why it was so important for Pintupi people to start their own service. WDNWPT was started using funds raised by a large auction of Pintupi people’s paintings at the Art Gallery of NSW which raised over $1 million dollars.
“Someone has to lead the way. It may be an individual, it may be a group.
It may come from senior leadership, or from local communities, or from schools, or from organisations. Leadership can be found anywhere. What’s needed is some set of people who realise that fundamental change is needed, and are willing to take the lead.”
(Manley Begay, ‘The responsibilities and challenges of indigenous leaders: insights from American Indian Nations’, presentation to Building Effective Indigenous Governance conference, 4–7 November 2003, Jabiru, Northern Territory)
In footy, you know pretty quickly if your game is off. Your goal kicking looks amateurish, your captain has forgotten the game plan, your players are not working as a team on the field, they fumble the ball, the coach is ranting and raving on the sidelines—you start losing.
The first thing a footy team does to try to get back on track is have a good hard look at what they are doing right, and what they are doing wrong.
And just like footy, there are some telltale signs that show when you might have a governance problem. Depending on your situation, they could include:
As one thing can affect another, you may notice several of these problems happening at the same time.
Thinking about changing your governance
Before you start changing your governance, it’s a good idea to spend some time thinking clearly about why you want to make changes in the first place and how you’re going to get started.
Sometimes people have to make urgent changes to their governance because of an internal conflict or immediate crisis. Sometimes changes to governance are imposed on groups and organisations by external agencies or government departments.
Whatever the initial cause, your changes will be more effective and sustainable if the governance problems and solutions are identified within your own group or organisation.
The leaders of a nation, community or organisation are responsible for making sure things stay on track—that people carry out their roles and responsibilities so that things get done properly and well.
If the leaders are seen to be doing the wrong thing and not leading well, or if there is no sense of a collective future direction, it can affect how people (both inside and outside the nation, community or organisation) feel and react.
But everyone has a role to play in keeping governance on track, not just leaders. It is important to do your own job the best way you can, but also to ask the hard questions when your community or organisation doesn’t seem to be achieving its goals.
There is no single, correct way to get started. Each nation, community and organisation is unique and will make changes in different ways, and at a different pace.
But there are some tips we have documented from the efforts of other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander groups that may help reduce the burden.
The first step in rebuilding governance is to identify what’s working and what’s not.
You can’t change something if you don’t know what the problem is. And you won’t be able to develop workable solutions unless you have a good idea of your strengths, talents and skills.
That means one of your first steps must be to get on the front foot and evaluate your governance—before you are hit by crises or external demands for change.
You could evaluate how well all these different aspects of your governance are working:
Definition: Evaluation is the process of thinking about and analysing the worth or value of what you have been doing in your nation, community or organisation, and your processes and strategies for achieving your intentions. Then ask yourself if those are working or not, whether you are heading in the right direction, and what you need to change in order to be more likely to achieve your original intentions.
You can evaluate a program, a person’s work performance, values and behaviour, decision-making processes, leadership capacity, structures, rules and policies, goals and outcomes, your communications, internal and external relationships, and so on.
When you evaluate something, you tend to assess its effectiveness, efficiency, accountability, cultural legitimacy and sustainability.
You can evaluate your governance using different methods, including:
Often people use a combination of methods so they can gather different kinds of information and views.
Remember to include young and older people, men and women, leaders and workers in your evaluation discussions; they may see things differently and have different solutions.
Above all, don’t be afraid to ask the hard questions, and be honest about answering them.
Evaluation generally gives the best results when it is done progressively through ongoing monitoring. That way it’s part of a cycle of linked stages rather than a one-off snapshot of how things are.
You can use an external evaluation expert or do the evaluation yourself. There are advantages to both and often people use a combination.
Definition: Self-evaluation is where the people in a nation, community, organisation or governing board give their own views and judgements about their governance arrangements and performance.
Usually someone in authority decides to get this going, the best way to do it, who will be involved, what the focus will be and how the results will be implemented.
But even in these cases, people often still call in external expertise to assist them.
One challenge when doing this by yourselves is making sure you tackle the hard issues and questions. Sometimes this is difficult because it may challenge existing vested interests and people’s comfort zones.
On the other hand, it’s good to do a quick self-evaluation of how you’re going. You can use it as a starting point from which to dig deeper into your governance gaps, risks and strengths.
These days a lot of nations, communities and organisations prefer to do what’s called participatory evaluation.
Definition: Participatory evaluation is where the people on the ground become directly involved in undertaking some aspects of the evaluation together. These activities may involve identifying the problems and their possible causes, defining the appropriate standards for performance, gathering and analysing relevant information, providing feedback, identifying solutions, communicating the results and making the recommended changes.
Getting on the front foot and doing your own self-evaluation—and making sure your members and staff participate in the process—puts you in greater control of identifying your own indicators of success and failure, and of using relevant evaluation methods that work best in your local culture or organisation.
An additional benefit of this approach is that individuals build their own capacity and understanding of what works well—and what doesn’t and why—so they are more able to take responsibility for corrective action and to make sustainable changes.
There are a number of reasons why evaluating your governance every so often is a good idea. It helps you to:
It is best to evaluate your governance at regular intervals so that you can immediately consider what needs to be done and develop actions to address any problems or gaps before they get out of hand.
Evaluating your governance should allow you to see what’s working and what needs some more attention. This will help you find ways to improve how you do things.
The point of any evaluation is to make a decision or judgement—should we do more, do less, do something different or do nothing at all?
This resource outlines seven key steps to evaluation and important questions to ask along the way.
Organisations, nations, communities and informal groups can use this quick check-up to get an immediate idea of where they are in terms of their governance.
This check-up shouldn’t replace a thorough evaluation of your governance arrangements; it is simply a starting point, to give you an overall picture.
Its main purpose is to help you:
Once you’ve identified a problem area or gap, you can go to a specific topic area in the toolkit for more detailed information.
You can use this check-up to give you a quick assessment of where you are at with your overall governance. It will help you to identify what you are already doing well and the areas you can focus on for improvement.
At this early stage, it may help to begin writing down some of your ideas, and the solutions and options for putting those into practice.
You can do this by starting your own governance development and action plan. This sets out your plan of attack—your best options and tactics for achieving your goals.
It will help you keep track of where you are at and consider implementation issues:
Below is a template for one version of a governance development and action plan.
Topic 5 includes more detailed information about the type of planning involved in creating a governance development and action plan.
You can use the plan together with your quick governance health check-up and the other check-ups in the toolkit to progressively address more specific areas of your governance that need to be addressed.
This Governance Development and Action Plan is based on a strategic planning template that was developed by Dr Ian Hughes at the Yooroang Garang: School of Indigenous Health Studies in The University of Sydney.
You can customise the template to suit your own needs, doing it in chunks, or using it to create a longer-term strategic approach to your governance rebuilding
“How can we know where we are headed if we don’t know where we have come from?”
(Leah Armstrong, ‘Finding Australia’s soul: rebuilding our Indigenous communities’, The Circle, Yarnteen Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Corporation, NSW)
The governance history of your people plays a major role in determining your current arrangements and your strengths and challenges.
Working through these histories together can help you to understand present issues, and to be clear about the cultural elements from your past ways of governing that you value and want to protect and strengthen.
NPY Women’s Council chair Yanyi Bandicha and Co-ordinator Andrea Mason talk about how NPY got started and how the organisation works as a service delivery and advocacy organisation.
Working together to answer the following five questions should help you understand who you are as a group and what kind of governance you want to hand on to your children.
1. Who are we? Who is the ‘self’ in our governance?
When you’re trying to work out what your governance strengths and challenges are, one of the best places to start is with is your own people. That means considering questions such as:
These questions are all about identifying which nation, tribe, community, region or group you are part of, and who you are representing through your governance.
Getting some agreement or resolution about these questions is a fundamental step, right from the start.
2. Where did we come from? What’s the history of our governance?
This question is about looking back at the history of your governance and thinking about the following questions:
3. What have we got now? What is our current governance like?
Start by looking at your current governance overall.
Answering these questions together will give you a clearer idea about the things you want to protect and strengthen in your governance. Understanding what you have also enables you to identify what else you need. (The quick governance health check-up will also help with this.)
4. What do we want? What will our future governance look like?
This question has to do with the goals you are trying to accomplish for the future. If you can’t see where you want to be, you won’t be able to find your way there.
Answers to these questions will give you a strategic vision for your governance. This might sound like a wish list, but it will help you make choices.
5. How do we get it? What is our strategy?
This is about how you can make your future vision happen.
It doesn’t matter if you start with small steps, as long as you have a good idea of where those steps fit into your overall governance plan and goals.
This resource lays out some basic questions and instructions for mapping your governance history. Follow these instructions and work with your leaders, nation or community members to see how your governance history is influencing the way you work today.
Every Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nation, community, group and organisation can identify things it does not have (needs) and things it does have (assets). A strong group or organisation identifies and uses its assets to meet its needs. A governance asset map is one way of doing this.
This map is a snapshot that identifies and brings together information about your overall governance assets. It is written from a community perspective and often makes use of a variety of visual forms, not just text.
For example, it identifies your collective:
Your governance asset map will help you better understand the local strengths and expertise you can call upon from your own people in order to rebuild your governance.
It will also enable you to answer some hard questions such as:
As an organisation or community leader, first explain to your members the importance and benefits of mapping the organisation’s or community’s governance assets, then you can follow these steps to map your governance assets.
Evaluating governance through risk assessments
Scotdesco’s objectives are to provide employment, housing, education and training, social and recreation activities and health and welfare services and opportunities for people of Aboriginal descent who live or work in Bookabie, South Australia.
Scotdesco evaluates its work through risk assessments of what’s working, what’s not working and what needs to improve. This evaluation is conducted on a board level, staff level and a community level. Scotdesco has a commitment to achieving realistic goals, outlined in their Community Action Plans, by carefully analysing new proposals, conducting research and learning from past experiences.
Overcoming challenges
Western Desert Dialysis was established by people from the Pintupi Luritja language group to improve the lives of people suffering from end stage renal failure and to strengthen families and communities by helping people to return home to their remote communities on dialysis.
Western Desert Dialysis’s biggest challenge has been to develop a model of care which fulfilled cultural imperatives as well as fulfilling the expectations of mainstream health service delivery. Additionally, they faced the challenge of gaining government support and sustaining high levels of excellent service delivery. WDNWPT overcame these obstacles by engaging in constant dialogue with stakeholders, embedding cultural priorities in everything they did and involving patients and their families in designing models of care.
