Inaugural meeting of the Web Advisory Council

June 14, 2017

What the WAC is

A governance committee that is part of the official IT and Data Governance structure at NAU. This council will advise the governance Trustees on matters concerning our web sites and web technology capabilities.

Background and purpose

When CIO Steve Burrell arrived on campus, talks began about data governance on campus. A slice of that governance model is for Web. Beyond that, there was a feeling that the university needs guidance and a broad perspective to help it move forward. The university  relied on Lipman Hearne, IT and Marketing so far, but it’s time to incorporate more perspectives as we move forward to serve as source of information and recommendation to data trustees. They’ll also act as sounding board to disseminate questions and feedback to ensure things we are planning for are actually occurring. The website is the most important publication at the university.

Review of current site

• Prototypes for College of Education homepage and a second-level were shown.
• Review policies and other guiding materials that inform our web strategy at NAU.
• Review the council charter.
• Governance Charter and Policy and Procedures documents were briefly explained and reviewed. All WAC members are asked to review and bring feedback to the next meeting.

Logistics

WAC meetings will continue on a monthly basis. Dina Barnese will continue as the meeting facilitator for the next 2-3 months, during which time policies, procedures and the charter will be finalized, and the WAC processes will be operationalized.

Q & A

• In eluding to beyond www, are we thinking digital communications? Speaking from Marketing standpoint we’d like to see consistent use of media wherever it’s used. From an IT standpoint, we’d like to ensure we are implementing solutions that are scalable. We have 450 sites, 600 users in Ektron and many more SAAS-based applications. It all falls into scope within these discussions.
• How will users handle information that was previously put into sidebars? The left sidebar will go away because it is primarily used for navigation on the Ektron pages and the new mega menu approach will easily absorb those items. The decision was made to eliminate the right sidebar because they are problematic in responsive design. The same information can be displayed in the content areas of the page.

Next steps

• Council members are asked to review the policy and charter documents prior to the next meeting.