WEB GOVERNANCE

The College’s web presence is a vital communications and outreach channel for engaging with all potential and current institutional constituencies; thus, it is essential to establish appropriate governance to ensure these assets:

• Support the vision, mission, and academic values of the College;
• Reflect the College’s brand and strategic goals;
• Portray accurate and relevant information; and
• Comply with all applicable laws and statutes.

The scope of Web Governance shall include all people, policies, procedures/workflows, standards, and guidelines that govern the creation and maintenance of the College’s official websites, associate sites, social media channels, and public facing digital assets.  This includes, but is not limited to the Westernwyoming.edu, MyWestern, blog.westernwyoming.edu, Intranet, Knowledgebase, Customer Relationship Management and Service Management information domains.

The Policy is maintained and administered by the Marketing and  Information Technology Services offices.

Adopted: December 13, 2018
Revised:  June 15, 2023

Procedure 2110A.1

WEB GOVERNANCE 

Roles and Responsibilities: 

Marketing:

• Establishes and manages strategic direction of official Western digital assets
• Oversees the Publication Standards Manual which provides guidance on branding, taxonomy, formatting and styling
• Owns and maintains analytics of official Western websites and public web applications
• Determines navigation, structure, hierarchies, and placement of content
• Ensures compliance with legal and regulatory standards, including accessibility, copyright, and privacy
• Maintains overall digital quality
• Collaborates with Information Technology Services to provide training on the appropriate use of digital systems and procedures
• Reviews requests from academic and administrative stakeholders
• Resolves digital use and content related issues and questions
• Liaison to third-party digital designers, marketing, and advertising agencies

Information Technology Services:

• Establishes and manages strategic direction of hosting platforms, technology applications and systems
• Technical administration and hosting of official Western digital assets
• Management of system access, permissions, and roles
• Ensures systems comply with applicable legal and regulatory standards
• Ensures cybersecurity and data integrity for all official Western websites, applications, and systems
• Collaborates with Marketing to provide training on the appropriate use of web systems, platforms and procedures
• Resolves technical issues and problems
• Liaison to third-party digital hosting and technology providers

 Vice Presidents and Directors:

• Guiding the overall strategic direction of their department’s positioning, messaging, and content
• Management of content owners within their department and ensuring compliance with governance and policies

Content Owners:

• Maintain the accuracy and relevance of the content to which they are owners
• Create content and/or collaborating with Content Contributors/Editors or Marketing to do so
• Review and approve content workflow requests
• Complete and remain up-to-date with current digital training

Standards, Guidelines, and Best Practices
The Marketing office will maintain and publish institutional standards, guidelines, and best practices that further define the Web Governance Policy. These living documents will be revisited and revised on a frequent basis so that they may be adapted to the ever-changing experiences and web content requirements of the Western community.

Compliance
Western reserves the right to remove from its servers, or disconnect from its network, any material, web pages, social pages or system that the College determines violates policies or applicable laws. Violations of this policy may be subject to:

• Temporary or permanent removal/modification of content
• Loss of digital or access privileges
• Required training
• Disciplinary actions

Enforcement of this policy will be pursuant to the appropriate administrative procedures.

Related Standards, Policies, Procedures, and Best Practices

• Acceptable Use Policy
• Social Media Guidelines
• Website Guidelines

Key Definitions

Content Owner: The academic or administrative unit with primary responsibility for maintaining designated content.

Content Contributor: A College representative with authorized access to a website or application who can create, edit, and submit their own content to a workflow but cannot edit other’s content or publish/approve content to become publicly accessible.

Content Editor: A College representative with authorized access to a website or application who can create and edit their own content, as well as others within a content workflow, but cannot publish/approve content to become publicly accessible. 

Content Publisher:  A College representative with authorized access to a website or application who can create and edit their own content, as well as publish/approve workflow content to become publicly accessible.

Content Workflow: A set of tasks and/or approvals that are required to publish or edit publicly available content within a website or web application.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM): A software system and technology for managing College relationships and interactions with customers and potential customers.

Digital Content: Any information or service that may be accessed via a web browser on any electronic device, including—but not limited to—internet websites, images, audio, video, search engines and locally or remotely hosted (e.g., “cloud”) software systems.

Intranet: The College’s employee network platform used for sharing information, communication, and collaborating with others.  It is an internal website available only to verified College employees and contains sensitive information related to job duties.

Knowledgebase: A platform used to store complex, structured information in a self-service online library of information about the College’s organizational data.  The data includes office protocols, training information, and other how-to topics.

Publication Standards Manual: In adherence to Board Policy 5110D, this manual provides guidance on the design and production of prospect-facing collateral, whether in print or digital.

Service Management: The platform used by all College service-related departments to design, build, deliver, operate, and control information and services provided to students.  Previously referred to as the work order and ticketing systems.

Social Media:  Websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking.  This includes, but is not limited to: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, Vimeo, LinkedIn, blogs, etc.

Web Accessibility Standards: The technical standards for web accessibility compliance adopted by the College.

Web content management system (CMS): A software system that provides tools for creating, modifying and publishing web pages.

Web Content Sharing:  Any information or file that is made publicly available using a website or application.  These include documents, images, data, links, posts, etc.

Web Governance: (See Scope)

Adopted: December 13, 2018
Revised: June 15, 2023

Procedure 2110A.2

SOCIAL MEDIA

Reference: Board Policy 2110A

Western Wyoming Community College (the College) welcomes the responsible use of social media platforms as a powerful tool to reach out effectively to its stakeholders. Online social utilities allow individuals to create a place for a group of people to come together online to post information, news, and events.  Social media is considered a public space and the College supports the principle that a college should be a “free” marketplace where ideas are expressed and debated.

Because the use of social media may blur the lines between a personal voice and an institutional voice, the College has established Social Media Guidelines to help clarify how best to enhance and protect personal and professional reputations when participating in social media. The establishment of these guidelines and best practices ensures information follows the same high standards as print and web publications. Western’s official pages on social media (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, etc.) are expected to conform to Board Policies, Administrative Procedures and the Social Media Guidelines.

The Marketing office will set up all official Western social media pages account based on legal requirements.

Each social media department page monitored by the College will have set objectives and goals. Prospect usage rates are pulled yearly from college-based resources as a guide for priority and messaging. For example, the most used platform in researching colleges by prospects is Instagram. These features are set by the Marketing and IT Department as outlined in the Social Media Organization Chart. Because platforms’ standards change, court rulings are enacted, student preferences evolve, and new companies arise each year, this may change without notice. The latest version can be found in the MyWestern Marketing section of the portal.  Individuals managing social media pages will abide by the applicable Board Policies.

Information on expectations for management of social media sites may be found (link to guidelines) or by contacting Marketing at marketing@westernwyoming.edu.

Adopted: June 15, 2023