CHALLENGE:
The World Bank invests millions of dollars in a complex structure of Web sites to build awareness for its mission and offer tools and information to audiences around the world. However, there had never been a formal review of the job the organization was doing in governing this important asset. The Internal Auditing Division decided to embark on a first-of-its kind management review of the public Web site, which included all public facing Web sites for www.worldbank.org and www.ifc.org sites.
SOLUTION:
As a consultant to the Internal Auditing Division, Emerald Strategies led the field work for a first-of-its-kind management audit of the public Web site, which included all public facing Web sites for www.worldbank.org and www.ifc.org sites.
Working as an IAD consultant, we developed a comprehensive methodology to evaluate the effectiveness of the organization’s Web site management. The five-part methodology included:
- A survey of the Web community
- Usability reviews – including an expert analysis (heuristic) and automated methods
- Staffing analysis including a review of
- the organization chart
- publication rights
- job descriptions
- job satisfaction survey
- A review and analysis of core documentation covering
- any written strategic objectives and/or plan
- the latest metrics dashboard
- content documents including the style guide, editorial guide and search instructions for meta-data
- technology rules
- policy
- record management
- Interviews with core internal stakeholders
These inputs informed a governance scorecard which assigned numerical values to each factor in our framework. The framework evaluated the effectiveness of the organization’s governing processes, core processes and enabling processes. A written report served as the foundation of the official audit presented to the organization’s leadership.
Our observations and analysis from an expert “heuristic” review, in-depth interviews with key Web managers and a management survey of all Web contributors across the organization formed the backbone of the report. In addition, we outlined the impact of the status-quo behavior and attitudes on the current Web site performance and made actionable recommendations for necessary improvements.
With the report and briefing the client was provided with:
- A roadmap to guide program management plans
- A scorecard that showed at-a-glance how the organization rated against all best-practice standards
- An actionable report with detailed recommendations for improvements
RESULTS:
A key result of the audit, the client was able to achieve strategic alignment: everyone had the same picture of the situation. The final reports served as the foundation of the official audit presented to the organization’s leadership and was formally adopted. This put the organization on a path toward transformational changes in their web operations.
The audit briefed to the organization’s leadership became a strategic roadmap for a multi-year program to address deficiencies and create a new governance structure. Because of the way the audit process works, the business units will be accountable to the leadership of the organization for making changes and reporting on their work to make changes recommended in the audit. Web Management staff for the worldbank.org site have said the audit was spot-on and credited the work as a critical catalyst and important lever in bringing change.
>> Learn more about our Web Governance Methodology (Slideshare)