A website management team (WMT) can be defined as an authorizing body of a website responsible for setting and achieving high-level goals for a site. This body includes content owner stakeholders and site production staff.[10] In some organizations, a chief web officer leads the WMT.
Website management team: An example of a tactical steering team organized primarily by production roles.
Responsibilities and authorities of website staff may be grouped by strategic, tactical and operational roles, and may be organized as a cross-functional web team. A strategic site sponsor articulates the high-level vision of the site, and determines if the vision is adequately fulfilled; a tactical-level staff translates the vision into detail by prioritizing projects, specifying site design and negotiating placement of content.[11] The tactical staff may be a group serving on a website governance board or steering team representing the main constituencies as defined by the organization's overall business plan.[12]
Governance models
Several models of website governance exist. Authors have focused on the content lifecycle;[13] primary components, such as people, process, and standards;[14] attributes, such as accountability, accessibility, participation across business areas, and standards;[15] and type of governance structure (centralized, decentralized, or federated).[16]
Through the Federal Web Managers Council, Federal agencies in the U.S. government collaborate to share common challenges, ideas, and best practices and improve the online delivery of U.S. government information and services.[17] Harrison, the first co-chair of the Federal Web Managers Council, has proposed the 5 "R's" of web governance: Roles, Responsibilities, Relationships, Rules, and Review.[18]
In a 2008 report,[19] the United Nations Joint Inspection Unit reviewed the management of websites in United Nations system organizations and made eight recommendations to improve a website presence. These included website governance, strategy, and policies and guidelines; content management systems; and staffing, training, and funding.[20]
In 2011 Jacoby introduced the Website Governance Functional Model.[21][22] Based on a business reference model within Davenport's[23]information ecology, the Website Governance Functional Model included at least 16 functional areas within an organization, along with the principles of project, information, and knowledge management. In this article he also introduced the concept "the website is the organization."
In 2012 Jacoby introduced the Website Governance Modeling Tool, "designed to help Web managers and their stakeholders conceptualize and assess their organization's website governance."[24]
The Website Governance Modeling Tool provides space and structure to illustrate functional areas of website governance. It as a pre-populated "drawing board", a place to process through Web work areas and strategies. Each work area and strategy is in an expandable, movable, writable box, with more named work areas to the side.
^Mahler, Julianne; Regan, Priscilla (2006). "Federal agencies and the evolution of web governance". Proceedings of the 2006 international conference on digital government research. San Diego, CA: ACM. pp. 325–331. doi:10.1145/1146598.1146687.
