One of the newsletters I read is AlertBox from the Nielsen Norman Group, Jakob Nielson has long been considered the expert on website usability. NN/g does extensive research for major corporations makes the information available to the public. His newsletter this morning included a piece on trends in intranet portals, which make extensive corporate information available for use by employees. In this report I came across a surprise—a section on governance! Most often such reports refer to “management.” This one out and out uses “governance,” talks about “roles” as central in governance, and stresses that in the last year, decentralized governance has been found increasingly beneficial.

Governance Becoming More Decentralized

As enterprise portals mature and grow so does the need for more structured, yet disbursed, portal governance. Portal teams are learning that since the intranet portal touches all layers of the organization, so should the governance. The new case studies reveal a move toward a decentralized or matrix governance model, as opposed to past years where governance was more centralized — being created, communicated, and policed by the enterprise portal owners.

Some organizations find themselves creating governance where once there was none, while others flesh out more specific details of their portal governance structure to accommodate touch points across the organization.

For example, the Carle Foundation has created a governance structure that is both formal and flexible, with defined roles, responsibilities, and workflows. The governance team is drawn from all levels of the organization and has assigned tasks to staff from nearly every operational area across the organization. From the senior sponsor to the individual content contributor everyone has a role to play in ensuring the upkeep and ongoing development of the intranet portal.

Governance, like most aspects of portal development, is marathon not a sprint, and portal teams realize that governance must evolve, as does the portal. (Emphasis added.)

NN/g’s recommendations are based on 83 intranet portals. The corporations studied in this research report were:

• The Carle Foundation
• City of Olathe, Kansas
• Coca-Cola Enterprises Ltd.
• Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)
• FDC Solutions, Inc.
• Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V.
• Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute
• Municipal Design and Survey Unitary Enterprise “Minskinzhproekt”
• National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)
• Northern Arizona University (NAU)
• Palm Beach County Board of County Commissioners
• Persistent Systems Limited
• Resource Data, Inc.
• Think Mutual Bank
• Department of Transport (Canada)
• Yara International ASA

Excerpt from “Intranet Portals are the Hub of the Enterprise Universe” by Patty Caya and Kara Pernice on June 29, 2014

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