In recent decades, scholars have dedicated themselves to explaining which ways of governing networks produce the best results. Contractual and relational governance are referred to in the literature as the most common mechanisms in network strategy. Thus, the main objective of this research was to analyze the relationship between contractual and relational governance in the performance of IT departments at Brazilian Federal Universities. A quantitative investigation was carried out whose research instrument was developed based on existing models in the literature and which was answered by 86% of IT managers from the institutions participating in the network. The collected data was processed using structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to evaluate the relationship between these governances and the performance results of the IT areas perceived by managers. The results showed that the performance of IT departments is influenced by both contractual and relational governance, with the latter having a greater influence. Environmental factors were not significant for the development of contractual and relational governance, which is a challenging result compared to previous studies.