As enterprises digitise governance processes, simply automating existing functions will not be enough. Legal, finance, risk, compliance, privacy and technology teams will increasingly need to work from connected systems and a shared view of organisational data if businesses want e-governance to deliver meaningful outcomes.
That was the central theme of the panel discussion “Breaking Silos: Building the Future of E-Governance Through Cross-Functional Collaboration” at the ETLegalWorld AI-Powered Legal Transformation Summit 2026.
Moderated by Graeme Grovum, Head of Legal Engineering, APAC, Legora, the session brought together Udaya Ragavan, CFO, Wipro Kawasaki Precision Manufacturing Pvt Ltd; Devraj Sanyal, Chief AI and Data Science Officer, Reserve Bank Innovation Hub (RBIH); Shreekanth Katti, India Head-Legal, Compliance and Data Privacy, Merck India; and Aparna Rawat, Chief Legal Officer, L&T Finance Limited.
Grovum set the context by arguing that governance has moved beyond documents, approvals and sign-offs. As governance increasingly operates inside enterprise systems, legal, finance and risk functions must either work from the same information or risk recreating old organisational silos in digital form.
The hardest silos
For Katti, silos can exist between functions, but some of the most challenging occur between separate entities and between global headquarters and local businesses.
The complexity increases when different legal entities operate across distinct sectors and are subject to different regulatory constraints.
In some situations, sharing information across entities may itself be restricted because of competition, confidentiality or other legal considerations.
This means breaking silos cannot simply mean making all enterprise information universally accessible.
Instead, Katti advocated common governance mechanisms and platforms for issues that can legitimately be handled together, supported by more uniform policies where possible.
Sanyal said organisations also need to recognise that not every silo is the result of inefficient management. Some are created by regulation itself.
Data-sharing restrictions and requirements governing how particular information is handled may legitimately prevent functions or entities from operating through a completely unified system.
That creates a more difficult challenge for e-governance: designing platforms that enable collaboration while continuing to respect regulatory boundaries.
Sanyal also emphasised that introducing an AI-enabled governance system does not transfer responsibility to technology. “The core responsibility lies on the function,” he said.
Digitising a silo does not remove it
The panel also examined whether e-governance programmes risk simply automating fragmented processes without changing the way departments actually collaborate.
Rawat highlighted how contracting can expose precisely this problem. Different product teams may independently negotiate with the same vendor or service provider, potentially agreeing to different commercial terms and legal conditions without knowing that another part of the enterprise already has an active relationship with that counterparty.
Introducing a more centralised contract-management environment can provide wider visibility into existing engagements, previous negotiations and commercial arrangements. This enables teams to begin negotiations with a better understanding of the organisation’s overall relationship with a vendor rather than approaching every transaction as an isolated agreement.
But technology alone does not solve the underlying problem. Contract negotiations can still become fragmented when information security negotiates one set of provisions, compliance another and ESG teams yet another.
Privacy is becoming a forcing function for collaboration
Data privacy may be one of the clearest examples of governance requiring multiple departments to agree on the same underlying facts. Katti said successful privacy implementation requires collaboration between legal, IT, data security and the business teams that actually collect and process information.
Organisations need to understand where data sits, how it flows through different business units and which functions interact with it. That exercise itself begins breaking down organisational barriers because no single function possesses all the information necessary to construct an accurate data map.
“Data privacy is playing its key role” in enabling that collaboration, Katti said.
For Sanyal, another challenge is determining which function should actually manage the data infrastructure underlying collaborative governance. He described an approach in which software engineers play a central role in managing and structuring data, while legal specialists provide the domain expertise required to interpret and use the information.
Legal professionals do not necessarily need to become data engineers, just as engineers do not independently determine legal obligations. The opportunity lies in designing operating models where each contributes its expertise to the same system.
Sanyal also noted that many enterprises continue to operate parallel solutions across divisions even when those systems duplicate work. Organisations frequently prioritise getting individual products or processes running quickly over designing an enterprise-wide architecture from the beginning.
Katti said sustainable collaboration also needs a governance structure capable of balancing common enterprise standards with jurisdiction-specific requirements. Where possible, organisations can establish global policies that provide a common framework, while limiting local customisation to areas where regulation or business circumstances genuinely require it.
The CFO case for governance goes beyond direct ROI
From the finance perspective, Raghavan said investment in cross-functional governance systems inevitably needs to confront questions around return on investment.
That calculation can be difficult when technology is developing rapidly. Boards face a recurring dilemma: invest today in technology that may evolve significantly tomorrow, or delay investment and potentially fall behind.
Ragavan argued that enterprises should look beyond direct financial returns. The business case should also consider regulatory requirements and the potential cost of not having appropriate governance infrastructure in place. AI readiness is another factor.
Many organisations may currently be using AI for relatively narrow applications like dashboards, automation or faster processing without possessing the standardised processes and connected architecture required for deeper deployment.
Moving towards enterprise-wide AI and e-governance therefore requires preparation before organisations can simply “push a button” and integrate everything under one system. Investment is consequently likely to happen in phases rather than through a single technology transformation.
Cross-functional governance is becoming an operating model
The panel’s larger message was that e-governance cannot succeed as a collection of independent digitisation projects. Putting a compliance workflow online while finance operates on another system, legal works from separate contracts and technology maintains disconnected datasets may improve individual processes without improving governance itself.
The more fundamental transformation is to build systems around shared organisational facts, defined ownership and cross-functional decision-making. That also requires recognising that some silos should be eliminated while others exist for valid regulatory reasons and need to be managed rather than removed.
For enterprises, the future of e-governance will therefore depend less on how many processes become digital and more on whether technology helps legal, finance, risk, compliance, privacy and business teams see the same organisation, understand the same risks and act through a coordinated governance framework.
The AI-Powered Legal Transformation Summit 2026 by ETLegalWorld was held in Bengaluru. The summit brought together general counsel, in-house legal leaders, and technology innovators, to chart the next phase of legal transformation in an AI-driven world.
