Comments on: Intranets were never meant to be so centralised

By: James Robertson

James Robertson — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 23:49:42 +0000

@Patrick, agree with both of your comments.

At the end of the day, I guess the point I’m making is this: don’t manage the intranet like a printed book or externally-released publication. Formal, traditional publishing processes should only be applied to very specific areas of the intranet, with a mix of publishing models used for the rest of the site.

By: Patrick C. Walsh

Patrick C. Walsh — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 10:21:53 +0000

In certain circunstances I could see a lot of value in dis-integrating monolithic intranets. Splitting an intranet up into discrete parts that are smaller and make more sense to the user may IMHO provide great benefits. However I still think that all content must be managed holistically behind the scenes to ensure that the intranet doesn’t descend into the death spiral of poor content, duplication and dislocation often caused by decentralised publishing.

By: James Robertson

James Robertson — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 22:59:51 +0000

Hi Simon, I agree wholeheartedly with the idea that the central team should play a “facilitation” role. If we just throw out tools to the whole organisation and say “go publish!”, nothing useful will happen. So even in a more “democratic” publishing approach, there is a key leadership role for the central team to play.

One of the first steps is for the central team to recognise that: a) their job is not to publish everything b) the goal is not to control everything c) they play a key role in supporting/encouraging/facilitating/leading.

By: Simon Goh

Simon Goh — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 15:22:59 +0000

The advancement of technology has made us less social, although we have more reach. We share more with people we know better – we know that. So now, we know a lot more people but at the surface level, should we then care to share even if the tool enables user-generated content? I agree that content should be contributed by the staff in the domain, but they wouldn’t like to do it, even though it’s formalised. So I feel that the central intranet team has a facilitation role to play – to find out the ground working issues and approach the relevant staff for content that would help. This will help them perceive the worthiness of their contributions. Publish stories of such contributions to cultivate a shared sense of social responsibility for the intranet – easier said than done, but it’s a step forward to the good old days

By: James Robertson

James Robertson — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 21:17:23 +0000

Hi Mark, great to hear progress at BT. I’ll add your blog to the 250+ that I already follow.

By: Mark Morrell

Mark Morrell — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 11:23:12 +0000

James,

I agree with what you say. BT is already achieving this on its intranet. Every person can be both a user and publisher on our intranet.

We have a small centralised team who do strategy, governance, standards, etc. but responsibility for publishing is with the owner of the content.

Our standards are used for all types of publishing – authoritative CMS published content to blogs.

So far BT has gained most of the benefits without many of the drawbacks. Social media is now mainstream in 2009 for our intranet.

I’m updating on progress with this on my blog if you’re interested.

Mark

By: Brian F

Brian F — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 01:48:25 +0000

Regardless of the model, a site needs an aim or purpose that is clear enough for someone to be able to say whether content deserves publication or not. All content is certainly not equal but one way or another you need some guideline on what shouldn’t be there at all, whether you’re in a central team publishing strictly controlled core content or a business unit with barely anything online.

By: Stephan Schillerwein

Stephan Schillerwein — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 07:31:07 +0000

All content is not equal – fully agree! In my approach to intranet governance I always recommend organisations to think about the different ‘content zones’ that already exist in their day-to-day reality (in- and outside the intranet). The intranet governance then should reflect these differences by applying different specificities to the aspects that need to be governed for the respective ‘zones’.
I found this to work really well and be easily understandable both for intranet teams, sponsors and stakeholders as well as for the users themselves.

By: Kurt Kragh Sørensen

Kurt Kragh Sørensen — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 05:47:45 +0000

I fully agree and look forward to your authoring models and to seeing you at IntraTeam Event in March.

By: James Robertson

James Robertson — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 22:46:26 +0000

Agree that this is a hard balance to obtain in practice. Neither of the two extremes work: fully centralised is a bottleneck, while fully decentralised is anarchy.

I’m writing about authoring models at present, and I’m covering five fundamental approaches:

1. fully centralised publishing
2. decentralised publishing
3. publishing with review
4. federated publishing
5. end-user contributed content

Using a mix of these, recognising that not all content needs to be of equal content, perhaps points the way forward.

By: Russell

Russell — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 22:35:16 +0000

Yes, a neat act to balance though. I think we need to establish good practices and a supporting structure that enables people to post, host and manage their content without being overwhelmed or over governed. Tricky bit is when their enthusiasm gets the better of them and we end up with the labyrinth of unmanaged and ageing content.