For anyone who reads my posts, you will know I call myself the Intranet Pioneer. Recently I met a friend and digital consultant who jokingly referred to me as the “Intranet Guv’nor” because of my book about governance ‘Digital success or digital disaster ‘ that helps show people how to manage their intranets and other digital spaces better.
While I appreciated the joke, it did make me think about the meaning of governance. Depending on who you ask, you will get a different response on what they think it is. Sometimes it even creates a sense of fear! People think it is ‘bad’ because it will stop you doing ‘good things’ online.
What do I mean by governance? It is a word which has been described in different ways by many people with lots of diagrams and flow charts. However, the problem is not what governance is for – it is how you apply it online. So let me be very clear here. Governance is good and can be easy to apply well within an overall framework.
A governance framework covers:
- The roles and responsibilities for different participants in your organisation (intranet manager, stakeholders, publishers and users)
- The standards and processes for making decisions and through which objectives are set for all information and applications
- Monitoring the actions, policies and decisions of intranet publishers and users
I have found the best intranets help people to be more productive and effective. A consistently good overall experience helps achieve these benefits. People need this every time they use your intranet.
Whatever people want to do, they need to be able to rely on your intranet delivering it. It needs to give them confidence that it will always meet their requirements. Without this, people will be less productive and effective with their work.
This benefits their organisation too. People use their intranet more frequently. They are confident they can easily find what they need. They know they can rely on the integrity of the information and applications.
It is having a strong governance framework supports an intranet or digital strategy, aligned with the organisation’s strategy.
Find out more information on how to avoid this conflict sinister underwebs from my new book ‘Digital success or digital disaster?‘. Read the introductory chapter to find out more. A license to share the ebook with publishers across your organisation is available.