Practical lessons from the afternoon sessions — AI, compliance, privacy, and leadership.

ADG Summit is Australia’s biggest event for Data and AI Governance, run by DGX. On 21 August in Sydney we brought together 160+ delegates, more than 30 speakers, and five sponsors to share what works in the real world.

This is Part 2 of the recap, covering the afternoon program.
If you missed it, Recap Part 1 covered the morning sessions — from Actian on why AI projects fail, to panels, keynotes, and firesides on enablement, AI governance, culture, and migration quality.

After a packed morning, the energy didn’t dip. The Boronia Ballroom stayed full as we moved into the afternoon program, with every session cutting straight to the practical side of governance. Here’s what stood out.

Panel: Responsible AI — What’s Working in Practice and What’s Just Hype

With Vinod Bijlani (HPE), Kylie Huang (Zurich), Aman Singhal (Suncorp), and Yass Omar (Heidi Health)

A practical look at making AI trustworthy without stalling delivery. The panel showed how to place AI governance inside Data Governance with risk-tiered oversight, shared accountability, and clear paths to innovate safely. They also tackled LLM sprawl, vendor risk, and the trap of thinking AI can do everything.

Key insights

• Place AI governance under Data Governance/CDO with shared business, risk, and tech ownership
• Risk-tiered intake and committee sign-off for high-risk use cases
• Role-based access, secured POC sandboxes, and an approved LLM catalog
• Use AI to govern AI with human escalation on thresholds
• Vendor due diligence: contracts, deletion certs, data residency allow lists
• Govern to risk, not hype

Talk: Measuring Data Maturity — A Practical Framework for Success

With Lisa Garbutt (Teachers Mutual Bank)

Turning governance from paper to practice with shared ownership, clear roles, and simple tools. Start small, prove value, and embed in BAU.

Key insights

• Business in the driver’s seat with clear owners and stewards
• Tech enables, business is accountable
• Start with critical data elements and shared definitions
• Lock in minimum viable controls before scaling
• Make issues visible with lineage and quality dashboards
• Show impact: who fixes what, by when
• Prove value with member outcomes and APRA readiness

Fireside: Beyond APRA — Turning Compliance into a Catalyst

With Luke McLaughlin (Alation) and Suhel Khan (UniSuper)

How UniSuper turns compliance into acceleration. Regulation funds and focuses fixes that deliver member value, scale, and stronger data and tech foundations.

Key insights

• Treat compliance as strategy across three pillars: outcomes, efficiency, foundations
• Unified stack: Databricks Unity Catalog, Alation, Power BI
• CDE-first governance with definitions, lineage, ownership end-to-end
• Efficiency and trust gains reused for DDO and more
• Pragmatic AI path: Copilot first, then embedded/vertical AI under policy and risk forums
• Automate governance to do more with less

Standout quote

“We probably had about five times efficiency gain, but more than that, the analyst trusted the insights. They knew the lineage, definitions, and ownership.” — Suhail Khan, UniSuper

Fireside: From Policy to Practice — Governing AI and Data in the Real World

With Natalie Hogan (Aware Super) and Tim Moon (DGX)

A playbook to turn policies into everyday practice. Federated ownership, risk integration, and simple tools that people actually use.

Key insights

• Hybrid data mesh: domains own what they produce and transform
• Governance team provides guardrails, training, and templates
• Five-step path: owners → CDEs → divisional GRC → lineage → measurement
• Risk partner sign-off and council endorsement for CDEs
• Dashboards show domain progress
• Small team at scale with templates, risk library, quarterly cycles

Standout quote

“If data is produced in your area, you own that data. And if you transform it, you own the result.”—  Natalie Hogan, Aware Super

Panel: The Modern Data Governance Leader — Skills That Matter Now and Next

With Diane Hicks (Essential Energy), Narelle Grayson (Ramsay Health), Rina Gami (Konnexus). Moderator: David Wieb (IDM)

Governance leaders are shifting from paperwork to performance. Storytelling, risk thinking, and technical fluency matter more than ever.

Key insights

• Conformance → performance: governance as the base for speed with safety
• Speak outcomes (decisions, revenue, risk) not jargon
• Build early wins and share them through literacy sessions
• Root cause fixes with lifecycle hand-offs
• Use AI yourselves to model safe practice
• Keep leaders engaged with visible wins and dashboards

Privacy Engineering — Designing Compliance for Scale

With Phillip Ward (Canva)

At Canva scale, privacy can’t be bolted on. It has to be built in. Patterns, defaults, and code make compliance the simple path.

Key insights

• Privacy in the engineering handbook with code samples and tests
• Purposes, treatments, retention as enums and functions
• Pre-shipped delete, anonymise, and archive routines
• Engineers tag purpose/risk, compliance owns mappings
• Meet teams where they work so governance becomes BAU
• Same patterns across Snowflake, AWS, and third parties

Standout quote

“The simplest path has to be the right one. Otherwise people take the simpler wrong path. That is the only way you scale.” — Phillip Ward, Canva

Panel: Value-First Data Governance — Implementing What Matters

With Arvind Raghuraman (BOQ), Ben Walker (Lion), Andrew Andrews (EDM Council)

A reset: governance only works when it solves real business problems and proves value.

Key insights

• Policy is not purpose — measure success by stakeholder value
• Lion’s 3-part stool: frameworks/maturity, metrics that matter, top problems
• Start with plain English issues log, prioritise by value
• Deliver wins first, then codify roles, council, backlog
• Benefits register credits contributors, reduces turf wars
• Use DCAM as a teaching tool, not a checklist
• Anchor AI work in metrics and business value

DGX Data & AI Governance Leader of the Year

At the ADG Summit 2025, we proudly announced the first-ever DGX AI & Data Governance Leader of the Year, awarded to Natalie Hogan, Senior Manager, Data Quality & Enablement at Aware Super.

The award was presented by Cuan DeVries from Actian, our headline sponsor.

Natalie was recognised for her outstanding work simplifying data governance and implementing it at scale. She also shared her journey in a fireside chat at the summit, showing how to turn policy into practice and scale ownership across domains.

Congratulations to Natalie on this well-deserved recognition, and thank you to our incredible finalists whose contributions are shaping the future of Data & AI Governance in Australia.

That’s it for our ADG Summit 2025 recap.

A huge thank you to our speakers, sponsors, volunteers, and every delegate who joined us in Sydney to make it such a success. We look forward to continuing the conversations — and to seeing you at ADG Summit 2026.