mark a. greenfield

Herding Catsweb governance in higher education

Mark Greenfield

Higher ed web professional, consultant, keynote speaker, futurist, uwebd

overlord, lacrosse coach, tennis player, music lover, dog rescuer

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All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental, and

should not be construed

True or False Most college web sites are bad?

xkcd.com

University Website

It’s Not Our Fault(most of the time)

mark a. greenfield

Higher Education:the toughest gig in all the web

Progress on college campuses is measured in geologic time

Without Web Governance

The web is thought of as a collection of micro-sites rather than a single entity.

Academic departments and administrative units think they have their own sites rather than being part of a larger web presence.

The Entire Site Matters!

Usability suffers because visitors expect a unified web presence and instead find a site that is graphically diverse and difficult to navigate.

There are no articulated, measurable goals making it difficult to measure the ROI of web efforts.

With everyone doing their own thing, there are resource inefficiencies result in wasting time and money.

The Tipping Point

• The web is now mission critical• Higher Education is Getting Flattened

Flattened

When the impact of the internet and globalization render and industry

unrecognizable, and in many cases, obsolete

“Most institutions can no longer afford to be what

they’ve become”

44%

believe that waste and mismanagement significantly factor

into increasing college costs

Moving Forward

the two things that get the attention of senior management

Web Governance

Deciding who gets to decide

HiPPO

HIghest Paid Person’s Opinion

Decisions must be based on expertise, not power

True Web Governance

• Establishes authority and accountability

True Web Governance

• Establishes authority and accountability

• Defines the role of all campus units as it relates to the web and establishes how they will support web efforts

True Web Governance

• Establishes authority and accountability

• Defines the role of all campus units as it relates to the web and establishes how they will support web efforts

• Involves senior leadership

True Web Governance

• Establishes authority and accountability

• Defines the role of all campus units as it relates to the web and establishes how they will support web efforts

• Involves senior leadership

• Involves line management

True Web Governance

• Establishes authority and accountability

• Defines the role of all campus units as it relates to the web and establishes how they will support web efforts

• Involves senior leadership

• Involves line management

• Is not a one-off process

The Web Is Not a Project

If there is no benefit in following a policy or consequence for violating it,

it becomes nothing more than an institutional artifact.

Web Governance Artifacts

• Formalization of Authority• Web Strategy• Web Standards• Resource Allocation• Project Prioritization• Web Metrics

Why do you have a website?

Institutional Strategy

Web Strategy

ContentStrategy

Social MediaStrategy

IT Strategy

Communications Strategy

campus committees = legal hostage situations

IT or Marketing

let there be web divisions

Concluding Thoughts

Concluding Thoughts

Web Governance Is Your Friend

Most colleges address web quality by redesigning their site or investing in infrastructure when the real problem

lies in the management practices.

we’re going to undermine the underminers

The Key to Success

Leadership

Management vs. Leadership

“There is nothing so useless as

doing efficiently that which

should not be done at all.”

- Peter Drucker

graduate from a production shop

to a strategic shop

2011: The Year of Web Governance (in Higher Education)

#hewebgov

Thank You

mark a greenfield

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