Web Manager University - Spring 2008s
Class Title: Improving Web Governance at Your Agency
| Instructor: | Candi Harrison | |
| Date: | March 20 –21, 2008 (Wednesday & Thursday) | |
| Time: | 9:00 am – 4:00 pm | |
| Place: | Department of Labor |
Directions to DOL |
| Fee: | $400 for federal, state or local U.S. government
employees; |
|
Course Description
What makes a web governance structure successful? What aspects of governance can you—as the web manager—control? How can you use your leadership skills to get your agency to improve its governance structure? We'll talk about the roles, rules, and relationships that make web governance successful. We'll cover strategic planning, policies, and procedures, organization, training, and that most critical ingredient—the glue that holds it all together—communication. Communication with your bosses, communication with your web organization, and communication across agencies. Finally, we'll talk about how web governance might be affected by the coming change in political leadership. This course will be interactive—bring your experiences and tips to share with your colleagues.
Why You Should Attend
Government websites have been a grassroots effort from the beginning and so has web governance. While that was a terrific phenomenon in many ways, it gets difficult when you need top level support to make the strides and changes necessary in this ever–changing world of the Internet. And even those agencies with great web governance structures can go the other direction when the players change. If you are one of the many web managers who are struggling with these issues, then this course is for you. You are not powerless, especially when you use critical mass to cause the change you need. We'll arm you with practical strategies for leading your agency to a successful web governance structure. And we'll look ahead to the next year, when changing administrations could bring exciting opportunities to strengthen web governance.
What You'll Learn
- The components of web governance: roles, rules, and relationships.
- Strategies for improving communications with your bosses, with your organization, and with web managers across agencies.
- Suggestions for the kinds of website policies and procedures you'll need to maintain your governance structure.
- The components of a good strategic plan and how to turn it into action.
- The skills you need on your team and how to develop and maintain those skills through a good training plan.
- The importance of being strong leaders and how you can use your leadership skills to guide and inspire others.
- About the coming transition and how you might use it to your benefit, to make your governance structure stronger.
- Opportunities to get involved in the broader web manager community and how that community can be one of your best assets as you face your governance challenges.
- How your colleagues are dealing with the same challenges facing you.
Who Should Attend
This course is geared to government web managers, at any grade, who are in leadership roles: departmental or agency web managers; web managers of major organizational components, such as bureaus; and web managers of large geographic areas, such as regions. We want you to be able to go back and use what you've learned, right away.
Class Format
Lecture, with lots of opportunity for interactive discussion. Participants should come prepared to talk about experiences from their own organizations.
Candi Harrison was Web Manager at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, from 1995-2005, where she managed HUD's Internet and intranet websites, web-based public kiosks, and web clinics for HUD partners. Under her leadership, HUD received numerous awards, including the first Digital Government Award in 2000 for outstanding use of the Internet in serving citizens; the E-Gov Trailblazer Award in 2001 for HUD's web clinics; and the E-Gov Pioneer Award in 1999 for HUD's kiosks.
In 2004, Candi co-chaired the interagency U.S. Government Web Content Management Working Group (which became the Web Managers Advisory Council), as part of the Interagency Committee on Government Information (ICGI), required by the E-Gov Act of 2002. The group researched and recommended policies for federal public websites that resulted in OMB's direction to agency heads in OMB Memorandum M-05-04 . Candi organized and led workshops across the country to train government web managers on the new federal policies and best practices; and she helped create Webcontent.gov, as a resource for government web managers.
In 2000, Candi founded the Web Content Managers Forum; and she remained part of its leadership until she retired in September 2005, after 24 years of federal government service.
Prior to working in government, Candi was a member of student services staffs at the University of Pennsylvania, PA and Rider University in Lawrenceville, NJ. She holds a B.S. in English Education and an M.S. in Higher Education Administration, both from Indiana University.
Presently, Candi lives in Tucson, AZ. She maintains her blog Candi on Content.
Return to the Spring 2008 Schedule of Classes
Page Updated or Reviewed: January 3, 2008
