The fantasy of frictionless governance is attractive because it promises speed without bureaucracy. In practice, it often means that decisions disappear into habit, delegation, or software defaults before anyone can explain who approved what, under which assumptions, and with what risks attached.
Governance becomes useful not when it removes every pause, but when it creates the right pauses. A good review checkpoint is not a sign that the system is failing. It is a sign that the institution still knows where judgment lives.
That is why documentation matters so much in Martin Lepage’s governance work. Traceability is less about bureaucratic excess than about preserving the social memory of consequential decisions.