Website Governance Plan Essentials: What You Need to Know

Websites have become a key interface between visitors and organizations across industries. From healthcare providers looking to share critical information with patients, to universities looking to attract prospective students, it’s essential that an institutions’ digital presence is well-maintained, up-to-date, and provides a consistent user experience on every page. To meet this demand, many organizations are implementing website governance. 

What is website governance?

Website governance is a set of policies and procedures that determine how websites are created and maintained, and outline who is responsible for such work. Effective website governance frameworks streamline internal workflows, ease friction and confusion between departments, and generally ensure a high-quality user experience across the organizations’ entire web presence.

The advantages of a high-level governance structure are numerous — but when you consider ascribing owners for every single web page, or roles and permissions for every employee who works on your website, the scale of the project can feel dizzying. Fear not: in this handy guide we’ve distilled our decades of experience helping organizations turn their website governance aspirations into crucial facets of their workflows. This primer will walk you through the basic steps of successful web governance, from forming a committee to sustaining relevance. Once you’ve nailed the basic steps, you can find more advanced insights into digital governance in our comprehensive guide.

If you’re looking for tailored expertise to help launch your digital governance journey, we’d love to help — learn more about our services. 

Selecting a governance committee: who owns your website governance plan?

The first logical step in your website governance plan is to decide who will shape the policies and practices. For this, we recommend forming a website governance committee: a group of colleagues who will meet at regular intervals to devise and update your governance plan.

The benefits of a website governance committee

Forming a governance committee offers several advantages. The first is clarity: knowing who is responsible for creating and maintaining your governance plan, conducting any necessary research, and considering amendments lays a strong foundation for your governance efforts.

Making decisions by committee, rather than individually, also offers a snapshot of company perspectives. There are likely several teams within your organization whose work impacts your website: for example, design, development, marketing and content. Each of these teams will have different insights into how the website functions, which governance guidelines would be practical/impractical to follow, and what could be improved. A strong committee will include members from a variety of departments, allowing for the broadest range of knowledge and perspectives to be captured within the decision-making process.

It’s also an opportunity to embrace diversity more widely. A committee that reflects not just the diversity of opinion within your organization and user base, but also the diversity of gender, race, sexuality, socioeconomic backgrounds, and physical ability will be able to offer a much broader perspective to decision-making. Each of our experiences is different, and our individual experiences impact our awareness. For example, a member of your governance committee with a disability might notice issues with your site’s accessibility plan that other members may have missed. A diverse governance committee lays the foundation for truly inclusive web experiences.

A governance committee also offers authority. A governance plan is only useful if people within your organization feel empowered and motivated to use it. A diverse committee means that you have ambassadors for your governance plan embedded within different departments in your organization, to encourage adoption and set a good example by implementing the governance practices in their own workflows.

Selecting committee members

When deciding who should be on your website governance committee, start from the principles above: who within your organization represents crucial perspectives, and will act as a good ambassador for your policies?

When selecting your committee members, there are several considerations to bear in mind:

• Keep your committee as small as possible, while capturing a good level of diversity. The ideal size will depend on your individual organization — we generally recommend between five and ten members.
• Ask people to join rather than mandating it: You want your committee to include individuals who are genuinely interested in website governance, and motivated to carry out the necessary work.
• Diversity doesn’t just mean different teams and backgrounds: It’s good practice for your committee to resemble the diversity of your organization and the people they serve as broadly as possible.
• Not all of your committee members need to have web expertise — but it’s a good idea to include several members who are experts about your website, to share their knowledge.
• Select members who are well-regarded within your organization and who can negotiate and compromise. This is useful for internal committee affairs, but will also help when it’s time to communicate your governance policies to the wider organization.

Assigning ownership

One of the most crucial parts of any website governance plan is assigning ownership. Someone needs to “own” every facet of your website and assume responsibility for making sure their section follows all of the relevant governance policies and procedures. Designating an owner for every area of your site is critical — without it, there may be friction around who is in charge of shared areas of your site and entire sections may get overlooked.

When designating ownership, it’s helpful to use your website’s navigation and start simply with the top level of your content architecture. For example, the first iteration of ownership for an academic website might look like this:

• About section is owned and maintained by the Communications Director
• Academics section is owned and maintained by the Provost
• Admissions section is owned and maintained by the Dean of Admissions

From there, you can drill down into assigning ownership of individual pages and sub-sections.

It’s also important to note the owner has “top-level” accountability — the owner is responsible for making sure the necessary governance work is accomplished, but that doesn’t mean they must carry out the work themselves. Using the example above: A Communications Director is unlikely to individually update every page in the About section of the website, but they are responsible for delegating this work and ensuring it is carried out.

In terms of a RASCI chart (designating who is Responsible, Accountable, Supportive, Consulted, and Informed within a project), the owner is accountable — i.e., their role is to take on final approval of the task, and they are ultimately in charge of making sure the governance plan is being adhered to. Other individuals within the owner’s team or department might be responsible — meaning they are actually carrying out the necessary tasks to ensure the governance policies are met.

Ascribing intended use

Once your committee is assembled and ownership for each part of your website has been assigned and documented, we recommend writing an intended use policy for your governance plan. Simply put: an intended use statement clearly outlines what your website should and shouldn’t be used for. Although an intended use statement may feel obvious, it can be very powerful. Different members of your organization will have different understandings about the scope of your site, and having a clear statement will help build consensus. It’s also a useful resource for new employees joining your organization.

As an example: the fair use statement for an Academics section of a university website might say that the website is used to identify faculty members to a public audience of prospective students and to highlight the faculties’ accomplishments. The statement might also state that it is not used for sharing internal materials relating to research or syllabi. In this case, if an academic wants to publish detailed course notes and reading lists on his faculty page on the website, having this clear and accessible intended use statement helps to explain why the Academics section is not the most appropriate home for this content. Further, the fair use policies of the other sites and subsites can help find a more suitable domain for this content, such as a private intranet page.

Defining roles and permissions

It’s typical for an organization to have a lot of employees working on and editing their web pages. It’s important to identify a clear hierarchy of roles and permissions to avoid overlap and confusion between different contributors.

Defining roles and permissions involves clarifying and documenting who is responsible for carrying out what type of work relating to your website and what level of access they need to carry out this work.

To give you a clearer idea of what such hierarchy looks like, here are some roles and associated permissions typically found within a governance framework:

• Contributors draft content for your website. They can edit their own posts, but they might not have access to publish their posts — and they cannot delete or edit content by other contributors.
• Editors have permission to edit content by contributors as well as create content themselves. Depending on your hierarchy, they may also have permission to publish content.
• Publishers have the ability to approve and publish content — this role exists if editing content and publishing content require two different levels of access permissions within your organization.
• Administrators have the same permissions to publish, edit and delete content as publishers, but also have additional permissions, such as editing or deleting accounts and permissions of other members of the content workflow.
• Webmasters have full permissions over managing and administering the website, including all permissions related to publishing and user management.

Sustaining governance

A governance plan is not a one-time commitment. Your governance plan should be a living document and will need to be updated regularly as your organization continues to grow. It’s also important to consider that a governance plan is only truly effective if it’s adopted and actually used by people across your organization, so it’s important to consider how your governance plan is communicated outside of the committee.

Some questions to reflect on:

• Where and how frequently will your committee communicate relevant governance updates to the wider organization?
• How frequently will your committee meet to revise and update the governance policies?
• How will updates and amended be decided upon (e.g., by committee vote)?
• Can members of staff who are not committee members suggest changes to the policies?
• What training needs to be put in place to onboard staff to relevant governance practices?
• What mechanisms are in place for replacing or changing committee members when needed?
• Who among your organization’s leadership team particularly champions governance, and how can their influence foster wider adoption of governance measures?

How will you know if your governance plan is working?

It is often much easier to spot conflict and issues than it is to identify signs of progress. Therefore, it’s important to explicitly look out for signs that your governance plan is working as intended.

Signs that your governance plan is working effectively include:

• Conflicts and confusions begin to dissipate. It’s inevitable that issues will arise — but if you notice them happening less frequently, that’s an important indicator that you’re on the right track.
• Spot checks of various sites and pages reveal they are up-to-date and that the principles of your website governance policy are broadly being adhered to.
• Duplicated work, repetitive questions, and frictions around responsibilities occur less frequently. With clearer ownership, roles, and documented policies, working practices should create less duplication and confusion.

Areas of your governance plan that require more attention will be much easier to spot. If you see any of the following signs, it might be time to revisit your governance plan:

• Administrators, editors, and contributors are frequently stepping on each others’ toes and entering into conflicts. This points to one of two issues: either your ownership and permissions policies are unclear, or they’re not being effectively communicated out to the rest of your organization.
• Feedback from site visitors suggests the site is confusing and difficult to navigate. It might be time to look into a new content hierarchy — our complete guide to digital governance will set you on the right path.
• Spot checks reveal governance policies aren’t being consistently implemented across the site. It’s time to talk to owners about whether the policies are unclear, or if ownership is better-placed somewhere else.

It’s important to remember that issues are not a sign of failure. New challenges will always arise. A robust, adaptable governance plan will need to be refreshed over time, to reflect your organization’s current needs, and keep your site in good working order.

Takeaways: Nailing the fundamentals of digital website governance

Approaching digital website governance for the first time can seem overwhelming. Breaking the process down into discrete steps and iterating over time will make governance projects much less daunting. With a diverse committee in place, well-defined ownership and permissions, and a clear and accessible intended use statement, you’re well on your way to a successful website governance structure.

Once you’re confident with the basics, you can begin to consider the intricate details of governance, such as privacy and accessibility policies, content structures, and quality management. Our ultimate guide to digital governance will walk you through the next steps towards a robust governance framework.

We’ve designed our guides to be as broadly applicable as possible. We have over 20 years’ experience in custom-tailoring governance frameworks for institutions across academia, government, healthcare, and beyond. Explore our services to learn more about our approach.