Web Governance, Now!

Over the last 15 years, the Web has fundamentally changed the way organizations conduct their business. From its simple beginnings, the use of the Web now extends from public-facing Internet sites to knowledge-sharing Intranets, limited-access Extranets, and the ever expanding world of social media. As the Web function continues to broaden, it requires the same management accountability mechanisms and controls that support and govern other aspects of business.

The notion of corporate governance is not new. Many organizations have formal governance controlling core functions such as IT and finance. However at Vamosa we have found that over one third of enterprises have no web governance policy or inconsistent policies on legal and technical compliance for web content.

Some view web governance as a barrier to freeform, organic Web development that has helped the Web move from a curiosity to a mission-critical business tool. However, there is now a mass of uncontrolled data available on the Web and this unstructured growth and lack of governance standards creates risk as the Web presence degrades amidst a cacophony of un-orchestrated development practices.

We agree with Lisa Welchman that the Web is simply too mission-critical to operate in an ad hoc or informal manner. In order to effectively align the Web with strategic objectives, Lisa is a proponent of formal Web Governance must be established and mechanisms implemented to enforce standards must be incorporated into day-to-day web operations management.

At Vamosa we believe it is time for Web Governance; Now and to demonstrate its importance, we will be running a series of weekly videos on this issue.