At Housing Governance 2025, Convene hosted a talk about ‘understanding and interpreting governance data to make effective decisions’. Featuring Arturo Dell, Fi Mercer, and Justin Bryant of Community Housing Group, and chaired by Soti Coker, this talk looked at the importance of governance data, and how Convene and GovernWith have joined together to help the housing sector in the collection and understanding of said data.
The talk began with an introduction from Soti Coker, who presented the importance of data, how it often gets overlooked, and that the focus now is less about box ticking and more about real insight.
Then, Arturo Dell spoke about three questions that often come up surrounding governance data for the sector. For organisations that are spending a lot of time and effort to get value from their data, there is the question of what is the value after the data has been collected? Arturo posited that the best way that value can be articulated is through its impact on decision-making.
The next question follows on from that, which is that are Boards ready to make those decisions? Do they feel assured and how can assurance be provided?. The last question Arturo brought up is surrounding a common buzzword these days in governance, which is AI. How can AI be brought into governance processes in ways that ensure safe and ethical practices?. Arturo spoke about Convene’s aims to bring AI to the sector in our Board portal, alongside our assurance platform with GovernWith.
After this, Fi Mercer spoke about how the challenges the sector faces with data and assurance are global issues. She discussed how stakeholders need data not just for compliance and regulations, but also to show that organisations are not hypocritical, and that they’re doing more than box ticking.
She explored the importance of having data surrounding contemporary issues, such as environmental sustainability, workforce engagement, AI, and cybersecurity. She also discussed the kinds of assurance that Boards require: for Directors, compliance and contemporary issues need to be addressed, for Boards, they need assurance surrounding Board skills.
Fi spoke about how crucial an objective skills matrix is, and how Convene and GovernWith have partnered to help the sector collect data that is less subjective, that asks more questions, that provides the necessary assurance for Boards.
This was followed by Justin Bryant of Community Housing Group, who has been working with Convene on proof of concept. He talked about how they use their governance data, and the three key areas they collected data from which is Board effectiveness reviews, annual skills assessments and Board member appraisals.
Justin began by explaining what things were like before, that these data collection processes were paper-based and isolated experiences for Board members. He spoke about how they were spending a lot of time on the mechanics of collecting data and wanted to work on a product that could help with that. He also mentioned wanting a consistent approach to Board member appraisals, and wanting to ensure objective skills matrix’.
Justin then went through the Convene Assure platform and what it looked like when they did the module alongside their regular processes. He explained how it took a bit of time and was a time-commitment for Board members to fill out the necessary forms, but they found it pretty easy. The results came in fast and immediately showed them potential areas for improvement before they even needed to dig into the data.
He showed how the data was presented, and specifically highlighted the data on learning styles, which gave them insight into how to help their Board further with visual learning. Justin stated that having it all in one place and generated as a report was very helpful, especially as a company secretary.
After the three presentations there was a Q&A, where they discussed the ease of Convene Assure and its intuitive interface, and how although there was difficulty at first for less digitally-aware Board members, it was easy to manage once that was dealt with. Justin mentioned that although there was a significant time-investment for Board members, they could see the benefits and that it was worth it.
In summary, the talk explored the emerging data governance revolution, the importance of objective data analysis, technology as a strategic enabler and the industry implications of better data governance.
If you’d like to learn more about Convene and Convene Assure, and how we can help you on your data governance journey, you can book a demo today.
