Self Governance

Every community exists to solve a different problem, and they should be free to choose the best way to solve that problem.

This playbook contains advice and things you can reuse, but ultimately the decisions are up to you and your community.

Choosing a governing entity

There are a couple of likely options that your community may take to form it’s governing entity:

• One decision making body: A single entity is responsible for governing the implementation choices for the entire community

• Collaborating decision makers: Several groups from the community are responsible

• Community driven: All the members of the community are responsible

Where a community largely exists to enable interaction with Government, it’s likely that the governing entity will be an agency.

Where a community exists to enable a peer-to-peer exchange, the governing entity will likely be and industry body or self-elected group of representatives.

Responsibilities of the governing entity

• Helping new participants join the community
• Deciding on the change management processes, and how the community operates
• Resolving disputes between members
• Representing their community in governance between communities

Governance between communities

It is likely that your community will reuse and leverage work from others, and that’s a good thing.

On behalf of all communities, we run a change and release process for anything that is shared by more than one community.

You can read about our change and release process here