Real-Life Advice on Government Sites from Candi Harrison

I’m just a dilettante; here’s some much better advice from Candi at Candi on Content. She’s part of the solution:

Web governance has perplexed government web managers for years. Because web management has been — basically — a grassroots effort in the government (many government websites were born bottom-up … not top-down), web managers have struggled to get the attention of higher-ups to get the right pieces in place.

What are the right pieces? I think of it in terms of the 5 “R’s” of governance: Roles, Responsibilities, Relationships, Rules, and Review.

* Roles: who, by job, must be included in the governance structure so that websites are managed and coordinated properly? Web managers. Public Affairs Officers. CIOs. Program heads (responsible for content on their programs). Contracting Officers (to make sure contracts for websites or content that will go on the web comply with agency web policies). A top management official (who has authority to issue policies all parts of the agency must honor). And others.
* Responsibilities: what must each person do? What functions, related to web management, are they responsible for?
* Relationships: with whom must each person interact and when? For example, if the CIO is planning to do maintenance on the servers, he/she should coordinate with the Web Manager far enough in advance to warn the web audience of outages.
* Rules: what are the policies, procedures, and standards that keep web management moving along efficiently and effectively? How do you manage web content? How do you manage all the other activities that support the website?
* Review: how do you evaluate performance, of the website and of the people with the various responsibilities for the website, of web governance? How do you make sure all the roles, responsibilities, relationships, and rules are being used? How do you know where there are problems in the governance structure so you can fix them?