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Reading list
This topic explains what assessing your governance involves and the benefits. We introduce the Governance Self-assessment Tool and explain how to use it.
While reading this topic, think about the following questions and how they relate to your organisation, community or nation:
Effective Indigenous governance is about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples setting their own agenda and working together to achieve it. However, it’s not always easy to know where or how to start. The purpose of this section is to help you plan your own governance journey to guide you towards your goals.
Assessing your governance involves evaluating and analysing a specific part of your governance. This can help you make more effective decisions. It can also help you stay on track when building or improving your governance.
Imagine you’re getting ready to go on a road trip. You can’t get started unless you know where you’re going, who’s coming with you, what you’ll need, and how you’re going to get there. The same is true for your governance journey.
Assessing your governance is useful when:
Assessing your governance is a practical activity. For this reason, we have developed the Governance Self-assessment Tool.
Every topic in this section matches with an activity in the tool. Your group can use these activities to reflect on key areas of your governance. It’s also a good way to document your findings.
We recommend that you have the tool open as you work through each topic in this section.
After reading a topic, do the matching activity to apply what you’ve learnt to your own context.
To get the most out the activities, we recommend that you do the activities with the people involved in your governance. This way, your group can yarn with one another, ask questions, and raise new ideas.
There’s no ‘right or wrong’ way to do the activities. You can start with areas you think are priority, or do it in order. If you don’t feel ready to finish an activity, move on to the next one and go back to it another time.
This tool has been designed to help groups assess their governance and identify what areas they can improve.
Each activity in the tool matches with a topic in Assess your governance. Read through the information in Assess before completing the activities.
It is best to complete the activities together with the people in your group. This might mean approaching leaders, Elders, and members of your community. Make sure you write your responses down. You could do this on butcher’s paper, sticky notes, or a whiteboard. This will make it easier to look back on your ideas and share them with others.
Download the Governance Self-assessment Tool.
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