Tag: Governance

Governance bootcamp

We are currently building the requirements for a new community area on our intranet, including created a ‘trusted source’ for consultants, administrators etc. Having conducted both stakeholder and user research we find ourselves with uncontrolled content repositories, outdated and risky records stores and enormously complicated discovery challenges. This can cause great costs and distraction to the stream???and can be fatal.

Part of the solution we hope to introduce is an information governance structure which will deal with the current model and create strategic value???looking ahead for the next move.

This can be achieved through…

strong governance process

Good gatekeeping

logical navigation structure

improved taxonomy structure

enhanced search

When the site launches, towards the end of 2009, we will garner feedback from the stream to judge the success and value this has provided.

Intranet ‘powering up’

In the summer I gave an internal presentation on our intranet and asked what’s great about the intranet and should be retained, what’s broken and needs fixing and what needs delivering to keep Insite current and valuable.

My responses were

What’s Great

  • approach
  • task based personas
  • ambition
  • engagement
  • validation
  • forage
    Retained

  • communities
  • local governance
  • adoption
  • collaboration
  • reach
    What’s Broken

  • playground
  • support
  • sponsorship
  • strategy
  • search
  • publishing environment
  • standards
  • integration
  • education
    Delivering

  • Integrated search
  • employee directory
  • taxonomy
  • global navigation
  • Open
  • strategy
  • information architecture
  • accessible
    Governance

  • top level sponsor
  • steering group
  • working party
  • knowledge Insite strategy
  • publishing community
  • common standards
    		•

    There???s no link back to the top

    An online knowledge community, or one that is clearly from a particular department must be connected into that same department. Community members will quickly lose interest if they think that nobody is listening to and feeding back on what they are saying. They will uncover a community manager who is unable to connect them into the hierarchy or represent the firm in the community.

    A real connection is needed to make the most of your online community and this can often mean enacting real change in your department. If you are using it to its full potential, an online community should be a way of getting the user voice deep inside your department. You should be talking about the online community in meetings right up to, and including, the top level meeting. This is the way your users are heard in the department, and the way your department can talk to its users. One of our top Partners never addresses a meeting without mentioning his community area on our intranet. No other site on our intranet can make that claim of such top level support?. Its no surprise its the most visited area on the intranet.

    So what do you do?

    Been contacted and asked exactly what the Intranet team does. Well..here goes….

    I would like to believe we offer a consultancy service in how to manage communities (both task and knowledge based). We also host workshops and lectures on the intranet concept, knowledge sharing and communication on the internal platform. This, among others, include the selection and implementation of a community ??? organizational and in terms of content. We also look to encourage use of collaboration, social media and other digital tools to meet the strategy/goals of the site.

    We are often involved when a site is dying and in need of revival, or when a department/group faces an implementation of a site for the first time.

    Knowledge sharing between the persons responsible for the community takes place in our various network groups and communications.

    We also have a ‘day job’ that includes

    Global and local governance implementation

    Site production

    Content Management Training

    Technical liaison

    Technical implementation

    Oversee the global community management of sites and make sure all the hosts and users are working well

    Oversee any growth, development, change in direction of any communities

    Oversee the launch of any new communities/closure of any others that are not working

    Troubleshoot any big editorial, legal, technical problems with our developers, coders, and management

    Work on the strategy and integration of the community areas

    Distribute any updates to any global guidelines

    Help the Content managers when they need it

    Monitor the value and quality of the communities

    Policing of content standards