™Framework and guidance
Plain Governance
Plain Governance is an approach to designing, explaining, and assessing the arrangements for the exercise of power within a group, organisation, or society. It helps people make explicit what these arrangements provide for, examine how they work, and give reasons for their design and use.
This website sets out the approach and its framework of principles, concepts, and models. It provides guidance, templates, and tools for examining governance arrangements, supporting good decisions, and writing or reviewing policies.
For anyone interested in understanding or improving governance.
Seven sections
The framework
Read the sections in order
or select a topic.
The approach
Understand the purpose, method, and limits of Plain Governance.
Principles
Frame governance questions and explain the grounds for judgement.
Key concepts
Describe roles, actions, and relationships using definitions and sentence patterns.
Connections
Examine how governance roles, powers, and relationships work together.
Evaluating the effectiveness of arrangements
Examine arrangements in use and the ways their application can fail.
Making good decisions
Identify the qualities sought in decisions and the arrangements that support them.
Writing policies
Clarify what a policy establishes, records, or explains, and what each provision does.
What would you like to do?
Start with the guidance relevant to your purpose.
Examine a role or arrangement
Describe the role, what is assigned to it, its relationships with other roles, and the instruments that establish these arrangements.
Assess an arrangement in practice
Record what happened, the requirements that applied, the evidence, and the grounds for your assessment.
Design decision-making arrangements
Identify the qualities sought in a decision and examine or specify the arrangements needed to support them.
Write or review a policy
Examine what each provision does, clarify its wording, and record the reasons for proposed changes.