The governance problem
Every multi-stakeholder initiative faces the same fundamental governance challenge: how do you coordinate diverse organisations, each with their own priorities and constraints, around shared goals, without creating a structure so heavy that it drives the most capable participants away?
The traditional answer has been committees. Steering committees, advisory committees, working groups, sub-committees. This approach has a long track record of producing meeting minutes and a shorter track record of producing impact.
DAVI chose a different answer: the Constellation Model.
What the Constellation Model is
The Constellation Model is a governance framework developed for complex, multi-stakeholder collaborative initiatives. It has been deployed successfully in ecosystem initiatives across Canada and has a documented track record of sustaining coordination across organisations that do not share a reporting structure, a funding model, or even a common definition of success.
The model is built around three complementary roles that together create an adaptive, self-organising system:
Action Teams are self-organising groups of practitioners who form around specific deliverables. Each team sets its own pace and scope, draws on the skills and resources of its members, and disbands or evolves as the work demands. Action Teams are where things actually get done. They are not sub-committees of a larger governance body. They are the primary unit of activity.
The Stewardship Group is a light-touch governance body that maintains strategic coherence across the initiative. Stewards do not direct Action Teams or approve their decisions. Their role is to convene, connect, and safeguard the principles that hold the constellation together. When teams drift out of alignment, the Stewardship Group provides the corrective pull. When new opportunities emerge, it has the legitimacy to recognise them as part of the whole.
The Secretariat is the backbone function that makes everything else possible. It handles communications, coordination, event logistics, and the administrative infrastructure that allows Action Teams to focus on delivery rather than overhead. A strong Secretariat is invisible in the best way: when it is working well, participants barely notice it. When it is absent, everyone notices immediately.
Why this model for DAVI
Several governance frameworks were considered during DAVI's consultation process. The Constellation Model emerged as the clear choice for reasons grounded in the specific character of the regional ecosystem.
South Vancouver Island's data and AI community is genuinely distributed. No single organisation is large enough, or close enough to all the relevant domains, to own the initiative. An attempt to impose top-down governance would immediately raise the question of who gets to be at the top: a question that, in a diverse ecosystem of companies, Crown corporations, universities, government agencies, and Indigenous organisations, has no good answer.
The Constellation Model sidesteps this question by design. Leadership is not concentrated; it is distributed. Participation is not mandatory; it is purposeful. Coordination is not imposed; it is earned. This matches how the most effective collaborations in this ecosystem already work informally. The Constellation Model gives that informal dynamic a formal structure.
What this looks like in practice
As DAVI moves into its operational phase following the April 2026 launch, the Constellation Model will manifest as a growing set of Action Teams forming around each of the five strategic priorities. Teams will draw on members from across the ecosystem, including small and medium-sized enterprises and Crown corporations, universities and government agencies, and technology companies and community organisations.
The Stewardship Group will be constituted from leaders who have demonstrated commitment to the initiative and who represent the breadth of sectors involved. Its first task will be to establish the shared principles and decision-making norms that give the constellation its coherence.
The Secretariat will build the coordination infrastructure needed to support the work ahead, ensuring that Action Teams can move quickly without losing alignment with the broader initiative.
An invitation
The Constellation Model works because people show up. If you have the expertise, the energy, and the belief that south Vancouver Island can build something significant, the door is open.