Book contents
- Frontmatter
- dedication
- Contents
- Foreword James Robertson
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Part 1 Foundations
- Part 2 Technology
- Part 3 Operational planning
- Part 4 Governance and strategy
- 16 Creating the governance framework
- 17 Developing an intranet strategy
- 18 From intranets to information management
- Appendix: Guidelines for social media use
- Index
- Miscellaneous Endmatter
16 - Creating the governance framework
from Part 4 - Governance and strategy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 June 2018
- Frontmatter
- dedication
- Contents
- Foreword James Robertson
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Part 1 Foundations
- Part 2 Technology
- Part 3 Operational planning
- Part 4 Governance and strategy
- 16 Creating the governance framework
- 17 Developing an intranet strategy
- 18 From intranets to information management
- Appendix: Guidelines for social media use
- Index
- Miscellaneous Endmatter
Summary
Introduction
Any decision we make, in business or in our life outside the office, will have a risk and a benefit. The better the quality of information we have available to us, the more likely that the trade-off between risk and benefit will be to our advantage. Governance, a very over-used buzz-word of the past decade, is about putting in place procedures to ensure that the people making decisions:
• have the authority to do so
• have all the relevant information before making the decision
• are aware of the impactof the decision on all who may be affected
• keep a clear record of the decision.
Governance is therefore concerned with:
• defining the decisions that need to be made in order to achieve an objective
• the roles and responsibilities of individuals who will make or influence those decisions
• the organizational structure of the business and how the individuals involved in making or influencing decisions can share their views
• establishing policies and procedures that support or constrain the process of decision making
• providing information that establishes the current state of affairs, so that the impact of any decision can be assessed.
Whenever two or three intranet managers gather together, the subject of the conversation soon turns to governance issues, and in particular the ‘governance structure’ of each other's intranet.1 When intranets fail to meet business and user requirements it is rarely due to a problem with the technology or to incompetence on the part of the intranet manager. They fail because decisions need to be made but no one seems to have either the authority to make them or the vision to understand the impact that either the optimum decision or no decision at all will have on the organization. When I undertake intranet consulting assignments one of my conditions of engagement is that I will have access to either the CEO (if the organization is reasonably small) or a member of the senior management team. My reason is not only to get a top-down view of what they see as the objectives for the intranet, but also to find out who they think is responsible for making decisions about how to achieve these objectives. I have regularly come across situations where senior managers are not sure who ‘owns’ the intranet.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Intranet Management Handbook , pp. 185 - 198Publisher: FacetPrint publication year: 2011