Solving the right problem: Why web governance fails when it starts with control

When institutions look at their web landscape and see sprawl, the instinct is to centralize. Consolidate platforms. Standardize templates. Create approval workflows. This is rational: sprawl creates real risk around brand, accessibility, security and cost. But centralization is a tactic, not a diagnosis. And when governance starts from "how do we get control" rather than "what do people actually need to do their work well," it often produces structures that solve for institutional anxiety while increasing friction for the people doing the work. This session reframes the centralization question. Drawing on experience across multiple governance efforts at a large public R1, including institution-wide initiatives and a college-level web model still in operation, we examine how starting assumptions shape governance design and outcomes. When the web is framed as a platform consolidation problem, governance tends toward restriction: approval gates, vendor standardization, content lockdowns. When it's framed as a distributed workflow problem, governance tends toward enablement: shared infrastructure, canonical content, tools designed for non-specialists and standards that support rather than constrain. Both approaches can consolidate platforms. Both can enforce brand consistency. Both can even hit many of the same tactical milestones. The difference is in what they ask of distributed contributors and whether governance reduces friction or adds it. The session opens by examining why "how do we get control of the web" is the question almost every institution asks first, and why it leads to governance built around approval and compliance rather than support. We then explore what it looks like to start from need — canonical content, shared infrastructure, tools built for non-specialists — with operational perspective from a practitioner who maintains a system designed this way. We examine how the starting question determines the governance model, including examples of centralization that works well when matched to the right problem at the right scale. The session closes with facilitated diagnostic questions that you apply to your own institution.