What is intranet governance?
Intranet governance is the backbone of a well-managed internal network, ensuring the platform operates smoothly, securely, and in compliance throughout its lifecycle.
It’s a continuous process that doesn’t end once the platform is live; governance must evolve to meet organizational needs, legal requirements, and ever-changing business demands.
In regulated industries, this process becomes even more critical. Governance is about more than just usability or engagement; it’s about ensuring compliance with stringent standards and protecting sensitive data.
The key elements of intranet governance typically include:
- Defining roles and responsibilities to ensure that tasks are assigned to the right people.
- Establishing content guidelines to ensure that content posted on the intranet is relevant, high-quality, and aligned with company objectives.
- Setting user permissions and access to ensure that the right people have access to the correct information.
- Implementing security measures to protect the intranet from unauthorized access and malicious activity.
These functions need to reflect the goals of the organization’s different stakeholders and the legal and regulatory environment in which it operates. As such, intranet governance doesn’t fall solely on one department.
It usually requires assembling a governance team of representatives from key functions, including HR, Communications, Legal, Security, and key business units, as well as IT.
The role of IT in intranet governance
As the technical backbone of the intranet, your IT department plays a crucial role in its governance. You are not just responsible for keeping the platform running smoothly; you are the gatekeeper of compliance, data protection, and system security.
Your role goes beyond ensuring availability; it’s about transforming governance policies into robust, technical controls that maintain both functionality and compliance across the entire organization.
Core IT responsibilities include:
- Technical guidance and architecture: IT sets the blueprint for how the intranet is built. It designs the intranet’s architecture, sets the technical standards (eg, frameworks, libraries, security baselines), and advises the organization on platform feasibility and costs.
- Platform operation and availability: IT keeps the intranet’s technical environment running smoothly, reliably, and safely. It is its duty to host, patch, back up, restore, scale, and monitor the platform.
- Security and identity: IT manages who can access the intranet and how securely they can log in. It protects sensitive data and regularly scans for and fixes security vulnerabilities.
- Integrations and APIs: The intranet needs to connect to other business systems. It falls on your department to build and maintain those connections, ensuring the system can safely and efficiently pull up-to-date information from other systems.
- Release and change management: IT plans, tests, and implements updates and new features on the intranet. The goal is to make changes safely, predictably, and with minimal disruptions to users.
- Incident response and operations: IT detects, manages, and fixes technical problems and outages. It develops systems that monitor the system and flag errors.
- Support model and runbook ownership: IT defines how user problems are handled and by whom, ensuring quick, consistent support and problem-solving for intranet users. It also maintains the runbook, a manual that outlines exactly how support staff should handle specific issues.
- Performance, monitoring, and analytics: IT measures the intranet’s technical and functional performance through uptime monitoring, dashboards, search performance tracking, and application performance monitoring.
- Compliance and data governance: IT has a role in ensuring the intranet meets legal and organizational data requirements. It works with the legal/compliance department on retention, e-discovery, and data privacy laws. It also provides the required logs and reports.
Running a legal intranet in regulated industries
A regulated industry is one in which operations must comply with specific standards and regulatory requirements. Examples include healthcare, pharmaceuticals, finance, energy and utilities, aviation, and telecommunications.
The level and type of regulation vary by industry. Notable frameworks include the Digital Operational Resiliance Act (DORA) for the financial sector in the EU and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) for the health sector in the US.
These, and many other frameworks, are enforced to protect the public, consumers, the economy, and national interests. Their presence, however, doesn’t change the intranet’s role. It is still a platform for collaboration and communication in the organization.
So at the fundamental level, the key elements of intranet governance remain. However, regulations place legal controls on how data, processes, and communications are handled. Intranet systems must be compliant. This adds more dimensions to governance.
| Area | Non-regulated | Regulated |
| Governance scope | Focused on ensuring usability, adoption, communication, and collaboration | Adds compliance, auditing, legal defensibility, and data residency |
| Decision structure | Allows for lean governance committees with fewer sign-offs | Demands formal committees that include Compliance, Legal, Audit, and Security departments |
| Content lifecycle | Content owners have a degree of freedom in publishing and updating content | Has strict approval workflows with controlled publishing and content retention schedules |
| Records management | Simple versioning and deletion | Audit obligations demand mandatory version control, no hard deletion, and archive retention policies |
| Access control | Role-based, with relatively open access. Broad access to company content may even be encouraged | Role plus clearance-based, least privilege enforced, i.e., users get only the level of access needed for their duties; nothing extra |
| Auditing | Optional. Logs are kept mainly for troubleshooting and are stored for a short time (weeks or months) | Mandatory logging for every system action. Logs must be tamper-proof and kept for an extended period (several years), subject to regular audits |
| Change management | Allows for agile, frequent changes to the intranet | The intranet is subject to controlled release cycles with a need for documented validation and intensive testing |
| Vendor/cloud oversight | Flexible SaaS choices. Teams can choose cloud tools or intranet platforms freely, as long as cost and usability fit | Must verify compliance. An organization cannot adopt a SaaS intranet unless the vendor meets specific security and compliance standards. |
| Data privacy/sovereignty | Data protection is guided by best practice and internal policy. | Legal and industry rules dictate where data can live and how it must be protected. Regular compliance checks confirm that the organization is following these rules. |
| Training/awareness | Training is encouraged, but it’s lightweight and often optional. Typically includes productivity tips, collaboration etiquette, and general cybersecurity reminders | Mandatory compliance training with attestations. Stakeholders must complete specific, traceable training, and records of completion are stored for audits. |
How compliance needs shape IT’s role in governance
As regulations tighten, IT’s role in governance expands significantly. You are no longer just the technical operator; you are the linchpin between risk management, compliance, and operational success.
Your responsibilities include ensuring that your intranet complies with complex, evolving regulations, proactively managing risks, and working closely with auditors to demonstrate the platform’s adherence to legal and security standards.
IT leaders must also co-chair or permanently sit on the intranet governance board alongside compliance or risk officers, data protection officers (DPOs), legal counsel, and records management.
Your scope in intranet governance now encompasses several areas.
Identity and access management
You control who can log in, what they can see, and what they can do. This means:
- Enforcing least privilege. This ensures that users get the minimum access needed to perform their job per regulations — nothing extra.
- Segregation of duties. Some compliance regimes require splitting sensitive tasks to prevent unauthorized or fraudulent activity. It is your duty to ensure this segregation of duties is reflected in the permissions assigned on the intranet.
- Periodic access reviews: Security frameworks require you to regularly review permissions, onboard new accounts, and remove inactive accounts.
Logging and monitoring
Tracking and analyzing real-time and historical system activity are key compliance requirements. Most standards require you to maintain immutable logs, evidence reports, and continuous monitoring to establish an audit trail that regulators can follow if something goes wrong.
Tip: Ensure your logging system allows for fast retrieval of tamper-proof logs to simplify regulatory audits and incident response.
Change management
Any change you make to the intranet must be planned, reviewed, tested, and approved before deployment. It is advisable to keep a record of the test results, who approved them, and who implemented them.
Data security and retention
Regulatory standards require that data be managed and protected throughout its lifecycle. Your department is tasked with enforcing legally required retention policies and securing data at rest and in transit in accordance with privacy and records laws.
Incident response and backup/disaster recovery
Regulated industries have strict protocols for responding to security breaches and system issues. Typically, incident response must include a breach notification process and root cause documentation.
This means you’ll have to keep a detailed record of what caused the incident and how it was fixed. Some industries, like finance and healthcare, also require that you make formal incident reports to regulators.
Regulators may also want evidence that the business can survive a system/security incident. It’s your duty to create backups and conduct regular, documented tests to ensure your incident response protocols meet regulatory expectations.
Documentation
Regulated industries require robust documentation of how intranet systems are set up and managed. Regulators can request this documentation from your department at any time to verify compliance.
As such, you are responsible for creating and updating standard operating procedures (SOPs) for all key processes on the intranet and maintaining disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity plans (BCPs) on file.
✅ Recommendation: Treat your SOPs, DR, and BCPs as living documents that are regularly reviewed and updated to reflect the current technical and regulatory landscape.
Audit liaison
Your department serves as the bridge between technical systems (like the intranet) and regulatory proof. You are required to facilitate system access reviews, answer auditor questions, and track and resolve any nonconformities discovered in audit findings.
Challenges to intranet governance and their solutions
Intranet governance in regulated industries is not easy. In the course of performing your duties, you’ll encounter many high-impact challenges that hinder compliance. Here’s a look at these challenges as well as concrete mitigations for you to employ:
Confusing and changing rules
IT leaders have to contend with many overlapping standards and regulatory expectations. These laws are also updated often, making it hard to know what exact technical controls are required.
- Mitigations: Maintain an inventory of relevant regulations, work closely with Legal/Compliance, and check for changes regularly.
Audit burden
Auditors want clear proof that the intranet is secure and controlled according to industry standards. They require retrievable, tamper-proof evidence that is time-consuming to collect if done manually.
- Mitigations: Build tools that automate log collection and audit reporting.
Data privacy constraints/vendor and third-party risk
Rules surrounding how sensitive data is handled and protected limit the range of SaaS and cloud vendors that you can choose from. Even then, dependence on third-party vendors exposes the organization to breaches and compliance gaps.
- Mitigations: Vendor risk assessments, require certifications from vendors, and include contract clauses for audits and breach notifications when negotiating with vendors
Need for careful control vs. the need for agility
IT leaders have to balance the strict testing and documentation required by regulators with the business pressure for fast feature delivery. This leads to bottlenecks and backlog, which may prompt you to adopt risky workarounds.
- Mitigations: Maintain a validated staging environment, automate testing, and adopt a tiered process for making changes. Small, low-risk changes go first and faster with minimum checks, while bigger changes get full checks.
Logging, retention, and storage costs
Regulators want logs stored securely and retained over long periods. This puts a strain on the budget by increasing storage and indexing costs. It can also lead to slow searches/queries if not properly planned.
- Mitigations: Use compressed archives for long retention, automate retention policy, and maintain indexed summaries for fast queries.
Cross-functional coordination and governance friction
Intranet governance requires IT leaders to coordinate with different departments: Legal, Compliance, HR, and vendors. These often have conflicting priorities, leading to slow decision-making and accountability gaps.
- Mitigations: Create a clear governance model, hold regular governance meetings, and enter into service-level agreements (SLAs) with vendors.
Level up your compliance with Powell Intranet
Powell Intranet is an ISO 27001-certified platform that makes compliance convenient for workplace leaders and their employees. Our solution weaves compliance into the daily workflow, transforming it from a chore to a part of the culture.
This is possible with:
Key Compliance Features in Powell Intranet
- → Built-in governance tools that automatically enforce content lifecycle policies, version management, and audience targeting.
- → Analytics dashboards that turn compliance into measurable progress.
- → A human-centered design that streamlines compliance for employees.
These features are designed to embed compliance naturally into the platform’s daily use.
Intranet governance success stories
Our success stories in regulated industries include Théa Pharma, an independent pharmaceutical laboratory with operations in over 70 countries, and Duane Morris, a legal powerhouse across various specialties.
Théa Pharma: Teams Governance & Collaboration Boost
Thea Pharma decided to switch from Skype Enterprise to Microsoft Teams. Operating in a multinational environment with 28+ subsidiaries and many external providers, the lab needed a well-defined governance framework to implement Teams.
Powell governance facilitated the transition. Working with IT, we were able to define laws and rules and apply them to Thea Pharma’s intranet in a few days. This resulted in 80% more adoption of team workspaces and a 75% increase in cross-functional collaboration.
Duane Morris: Compliant Cloud Migration & Optimized M365
Duane Morris wanted to modernize their intranet platform since the existing integration with Microsoft 365 had become clunky and outdated. The challenge was migrating to a cloud-based system while upholding the autonomy of its many departments.
Powell crafted a custom intranet solution for the law firm rooted in Microsoft 365 and SharePoint. With precise, structured communication in mind, we built a platform that strengthened Duane Morris’s internal processes.
This was a turning point for the law firm. Its staff of 900+ workers now enjoys convenient access to news and resources, with the IT department getting an optimal utilization of Microsoft 365 that facilitated a smooth and compliant transition to cloud technology.
Intranet governance in regulated industries
Intranet governance is crucial to the success of an organization’s intranet strategy. In regulated industries, compliance requirements greatly influence its scope and, consequently, IT’s role in governance.
Governance duties for IT leaders in regulated industries extend beyond keeping the intranet working. IT represents the intranet in risk and compliance audits, enforces compliance by design, and is charged with data protection, maintaining logs, and backups.
The department is also tasked with keeping up with regulation changes while balancing modernization and innovation efforts with compliance. This can easily be too demanding for an in-house IT team to handle alone. But worry not.
Powell Intranet has a proven track record of securing workplace best practices and compliance. With the help of Powell Governance, your department can create structured, engaging, and compliant intranets tailored to each individual and team.
