How do you get 1700 staff members who manage 900 websites on the same page when it comes to web strategy and standards compliance? When we, the Digital Communications team at McGill University, asked ourselves this question, one obvious answer was improved web governance. But the journey to effective web governance at a large, decentralized institution isn’t an easy one.

In 2020 we took our first step towards improved web governance with the launch of our revamped Digital Standards – our project to reposition and promote our established web policies, best practices and requirements in a concise, user-friendly format.

With this first phase now active, we’ve begun to roll out initiatives to help us manage adherence to our standards on an institution-wide level. These initiatives involve changes to wide-ranging elements of our web presence – from platform updates, to the introduction of new practices, to redefining, and in some cases introducing, roles and responsibilities. In all cases, we’ve stuck to our goal to keep our resulting processes and documentation as simple and user-friendly as possible.
Attend our presentation to hear about our progress, from research and planning to implementation and the lessons we’ve learned along the way.