Devolved editors can be a bit of a handful! Image: freefotouk

I’ve worked on several websites that have devolved editors (contributors who aren’t part of the central web team).

In my experience this can be a mixed blessing. What you gain in extra content from subject experts around the organisation you can lose in quality. Maybe you know the feeling.

So many devolved editors, such little time

When I worked for the UK Foreign Office web team I was responsible for the policy channel of the site (climate change, human rights, that sort of thing).

The content for each policy was owned by the policy desks and it was my job to help them produce good quality content that was audience and message focussed.

The problem was dedicating enough time to them to continue improving their web content – there was probably about 25+ groups of devolved editors.

I needed to get my head around the scale of the challenge and identify where to spend my limited time.

Devolved editor ‘Tracker’

At a glance you can see what's going well or not so well with your devolved editors!

So I came up with a matrix thing. I’ll call it a tracker to make myself feel clever.

1. Each team got a row on the sheet.

2. Each factor / step required for devolved editor nirvana got a column. Example: ‘in devolved editor’s job description’, ‘CMS trained’, ‘clear on target audience’…

3. I went through each team and scored them in each column: -10 terrible, -5 need to address, 0 ok, +5 doing well, +10 happy days (kind of thing!), with a corresponding background colour to reflect positive or negative… red for the -10 scores, green for the +10 scores.

4. Quick sum formula at the end of each column and row to total overall status for each team and factor.

I could then see just how well (or not!) each set of devolved editors was doing. I could see some teams had lots of red – I had to address these teams first.

Have a go yourself

In 30 mins you will have quantified the status of devolved editorship on your site.

1. Feel free to copy and modify the Google Docs Devolved Editor Tracker I’ve quickly set-up.

2. Add the things that are important to your organisation, web site or role in the columns (you can always add more in the future).

3. Add the distinctive areas of your organisation that have devolved editors in the rows.

4. Score them (be honest with yourself!).

5. Take a step back and let your eye settle on the patches of red – that’s your priority.

6. Think about setting targets – you can now quantify improvement. At least aim to get zero or above in all boxes.

Let me know how you get on!