Presenting at Stronger Together provides an opportunity to share both successes and challenges, connect with peers across Australasia, and contribute to the sector’s growing shared knowledge. This presentation reflects lived experience working across complex ICT governance, risk and assurance environments within a university setting.

IT governance is essential, yet it is often experienced by practitioners as abstract, distant, or disconnected from delivery. While committees seek confidence, assurance and clear decision pathways, practitioners navigate governance artefacts that feel unclear, overly complex, or misaligned with operational reality. These tensions are common across institutions, but are rarely discussed in ways that support shared learning or practical improvement.

Insights drawn from working across governance networks over time, where the role has been connect committees and practitioners and help governance take shape in day‑to‑day practice. Rather than focusing on a single initiative or end state, the presentation reflects on:

• patterns observed across multiple forums, including where governance artefacts unintentionally created friction and where small, deliberate changes led to better outcomes
• how governance documents function in practice, and how clarity of purpose, language and structure influences engagement and trust
• the ongoing challenges of operating in federated environments with competing priorities, multiple decision‑makers and limited formal authority.

By sharing these experiences, the presentation aims to encourage peer‑to‑peer learning and reflection. Participants will be invited to consider small, practical adjustments that could make governance feel more purposeful and accessible, without adding process or burden.