The Queen's "Website Governance Committee" was formed in the summer of 2020 to leverage the skills of web professionals from across campus to provide oversight of the university’s public-facing digital properties.
The committees aims are to:
- encourage a unified, consistent approach to publishing content online
- promote compliance with policies (i.e, privacy, accessibility) and industry best practices
- clarify processes, roles, and responsibilities in all aspects of Queen’s digital presence
- facilitate greater collaboration between portfolios
- align user experience across Queen’s websites and strengthen Queen’s brand online
A focus on WebPublish
The committee's general scope has been the oversight of websites built using the WebPublish Service (Queen's custom content management system and related supports). At the time of the committee's creation, there was a significant opportunity to impact the quality of those sites through the upgrade from WebPublish version 2 to version 3.
A key driver for that upgrade was the end-of-life date for Drupal 7, the underlying application of WebPublish. With the roll out of WebPublish 3.0 on Drupal 9, all WebPublish site owners were required to migrate their existing site content to the new environment over a 15 month period. This presented a significant opportunity to enhance Queen’s overall online presence.
The committee developed site granting and review processes that created awareness of new projects across campus teams, and created opportunities to share expertise and align individual project objectives with our broader university objectives.
With the migration of sites to WebPublish 3.0 completed, the committee continues to advise on the continual enhancement of the WebPublish service and to encourage the adoption of the platform by new users and for new projects.
Members may also engage the network of members to work through issues they may be having on their own website projects.
Name change reflecting WebPublish focus
With the launch of the Marketing and Communications Digital Governance Council in the fall of 2024, the committee's original name will be revised to "WebPublish Governance Committee" to reflect its focus on the WebPublish service.
Membership
Membership includes representatives from all areas of the university. Members share their challenges, insights, institutional knowledge and expertise, and influence the continuing evolution of the digital ecosystem at Queen’s.
As a whole, committee members possess a range of marketing and communication-related skills and expertise, including but not limited to web development, design, brand, writing and editing, and project management.
Members are invited to draw on others from their faculty/school/portfolio/department as needed to engage in committee activities.
Committee activities include:
- reviewing project proposals and projects in production
- contributing to evolving university standards
- overseeing processes and objectives for publishing public-facing websites
- engaging in subcommittee activities as needed
Chairs
- Robin Moon (Digital UX Manager,University Relations)
- Obie Udemezue (Manager, Education Technology, IT Services)
Advisors
- Brian Chan (Executive Director, Digital Strategy, University Relations)
- Jeff Glassford (Director, Solution Engineering, Information Technology Services)