Many organizations talk about Web Governance, but what is it – and why should you care? Simply put, Web Governance is a general term for the system of policies and guidelines you use for making decisions about your organization’s web presence. This system may be ill-defined and poorly organized, but it’s important to realize that you already have Web Governance. Thus, it makes sense to start working with Web Governance by mapping your organization’s current state of Web Governance.

Web Governance Terms

Before you start mapping your current situation there are some Web Governance terms I would like to introduce to make sure we are on the same page. When I've covered the different terms you should have an idea about your current state of Web Governance, or at least the tools to find out.

Web policy

A web policy is the highest level of abstraction within Web Governance. A web policy is a set of rules and constraints for how your organization works in regards to web. The purpose of a web policy is to protect the organization from risk and to ensure the utilization of your organization's full web potential. Web policies within an organization should be few and rarely changed. Web policies affect the entire organization.

An example of a web policy that many organizations either have implemented or thought about implementing within the last few years is a social media policy. A social media policy must cover the organizations use of social media, what tone to use, how, when, who and how much work with social media the organization should engage in. A social media policy SHOULDN'T be limited to only cover a certain social network. Those sorts of limitations belong in web standards, not web policies.

Web standards

Web standards are explicit rules describing the parameters, limitations and details to be followed by those involved in the development of content, data, web applications, etc. for the organization. These rules are focused on assurance of the organization's web quality, and should be updated frequently to keep up with the general development of the World Wide Web. An organization should have many web standards covering everything from non-technical aspects like design to very technical things such as server infrastructure. Web standards can typically be placed within four categories:

1. Design & contents
2. Information architecture and access
3. Web tools and applications
4. Network and server infrastructure

A couple of examples of web standards are:

• All pages on the organization's website must comply with WCAG 2.0 AA accessibility standards.
• Response time for the internal search engine must not exceed 1.5 sec.
• Your company email must not be used for social media activities.

The number and details of web standards will vary from organization to organization, but it is important to remember that web standards are not procedures or methods describing in detail how to publish web content.

Input, decisions and stakeholders

When working with policies and standards within the different categories, there will be a series of stakeholders either directly or indirectly affected by the decisions. Some of these will give input to the creation of the standards; others will be responsible for making the decision about the final versions of the standards.

In regards to mapping your current state of web governance it is interesting to look at who gives input and who makes the decisions within the different categories. The organizational archetypes who are normally involved in input and decisions are:

• C-level managers
• Business managers
• Specialist (IT, social media, communications, accessibility and so on)
• Everybody (anarchy)

Typically it is one or more of the above who provides input to a specific standard, and then a manager who makes the decision and as such is responsible for the decision. If there is an area without clear input and decision rights, and where everybody does as the like, we call that anarchy. This is often seen within organization's social media presence.

Your Web Governance

Now we are at the point where you should map you current state of web governance. Hopefully you already have a good idea of how it looks, but to make it even more visible you can write in the archetypes or even specific business units in the table below.

Now you have an idea of how your web governance is, and if you have come this far you are probably ready to work on improving your web governance. In future blog posts I will go into more depth on how you can work with your Web Governance. If you can't wait that long, have a look at the WelchmanPierpoint blog, which contains multiple interesting posts about the topic.

Follow-up

It doesn't make much sense for you to make policies and standards if they aren't being followed, but running manual compliance checks on large websites is confusing and time consuming. Fortunately, there are tools available to help you. [Warning: shameless plug] Our Siteimprove Web Governance Suite makes it easy to monitor your web presence helps support the processes and responsibilities.

Share your own experiences in working with Web Governance and drop us a line in the comments below.