CHALLENGE:
The World Bank invests millions of dollars in a complex network of websites to raise awareness of its mission and provide tools and information to its global audience. However, there had never been a formal review of the job the organization was doing in governing this vital asset. The Internal Auditing Division decided to conduct a first-of-its-kind management review of the public website, encompassing all public-facing websites for worldbank.org and ifc.org.
SOLUTION:
As a consultant to the Internal Auditing Division, Emerald Strategies led the fieldwork for a first-of-its-kind management audit of the public website, encompassing all public-facing websites for worldbank.org and ifc.org.
Working as an IAD consultant, we developed a comprehensive methodology to evaluate the effectiveness of the organization’s website 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 metadata
- 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, based on 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. Additionally, we outlined the impact of the status quo behavior and attitudes on current website performance and provided 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 was that the client achieved strategic alignment, as everyone had a shared understanding of the situation. The final reports served as the foundation of the official audit presented to the organization’s leadership and were formally adopted. This put the organization on a path toward transformational changes in its web operations.
The audit brief presented to the organization’s leadership became a strategic roadmap for a multi-year program to address deficiencies and establish a new governance structure. Due to the audit process, business units will be held accountable to the organization’s leadership for implementing changes and reporting on their progress in implementing the recommendations made in the audit. The Web Management staff for the worldbank.org site has said the audit was spot-on and credited the work as a critical catalyst and important lever in bringing about change.
>> Learn more about our Web Governance Methodology (Slideshare)
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