Anytime is a great time to incorporate intranet governance!  This often-neglected component is CRUCIAL for ongoing intranet success.

When you’re building your intranet, the project team is engaged and focused to deliver a great solution.  The launch goes smoothly, and your intranet is met with excitement and enthusiasm, but as time passes, new challenges arise – people want to add new types of information, content becomes outdated, links become broken, business changes, search doesn’t return expected results, staff changes, and many more.  Intranet governance provides the framework for how people should use your intranet and enables decision-making for handling these new challenges.

Going through the process of developing intranet governance will introduce you to a deluge of questions:

What is the purpose of your intranet?  What value does it provide its users?  Who are all the users?  Do they have different needs?  What do you expect users to use the intranet for?  Are processes in place to help foster its adoption?  Is the information on the intranet exclusively there?  What content belongs on the intranet?  What content is not approved for the intranet?  What’s the process to determine if something belongs on the intranet?  Are there any laws or regulations that need to be considered?  Who owns this page or that site?  How can a suggestion be made, or feedback provided?  What happens if a site owner changes roles or leaves the company?  Is there a succession plan?  Are the roles and responsibilities of everyone working on or with the intranet documented and easily findable?  How can someone fix or report outdated/broken/inappropriate content?  How frequently will different types of content be updated?  When will content be deleted or archived?  How can a new site on the intranet be requested?  Is user feedback being considered and incorporated into decisions?  How do you show users that this is the case?  What are new features or efforts on the roadmap?  Are there resources available to allow different types of users to better leverage the intranet and its various features?

Answering these questions and building out intranet governance will help:

  • Focus on what scope you’re working to address
  • Help prevent your intranet from becoming an information dumping ground
  • Prevent the erosion of trust you’ve built with your users and instead serve to strengthen it

A great resource for those looking for more information is Microsoft’s Planning Intranet Governance.

Start incorporating intranet governance today

If you’re looking to build a new intranet, improve your intranet experience, or develop your intranet governance, let’s talk!  We’re happy to schedule a no-pressure, no-commitment call to discuss your needs!