The eight decisions a content governance model has to make

Search what is content governance and you get an answer somebody wrote for a US marketing team. It treats governance as brand consistency.

For an Australian government content team that definition misses the parts that matter. The legal obligations, the accountability, and the public scrutiny.

Content governance is not a document. It is 8 decisions, and a model that has not made all 8 is decoration.

This guide is for content leads and content managers asked to write or defend a governance model inside an Australian government agency. It assumes you already have content and no agreed model.

Here is the quick test. If 2 people in your agency would give a different answer to who is allowed to change this page, you have a governance gap, not a content problem.

Before you start

Three things:

• a list of your top 10 pages by traffic

• the name of whoever approves content today, and what they think they are approving

• whether your agency's services fall inside the Digital Service Standard, because that decides whether the Style Manual binds you

The one everyone skips is the second. Most agencies have never asked the approver what they believe their job is.

What content governance is not

Three things get confused with it, and the confusion costs teams scope and budget.

It is not content strategy. Strategy decides what content you create and why. Governance decides who answers for it once it exists. A strategy with no governance is the most common failure: a good plan nobody has to follow.

It is not data governance. Data governance manages structured records and datasets. Content governance manages published information people read and act on.

It is not a publishing workflow. A workflow in your content management system is a tool. Governance decides who sits in that workflow and what they answer for. A workflow without governance automates whoever happens to have access.

1. Name an owner for each piece of content

A named person, not a branch and not a team inbox. Ownership means answering one question on a cycle: is this still true, and is it still the fastest way to the answer.

Take your 10 highest-traffic pages and write a name beside each.

The pages where you cannot fill in a name are the pages that rot.

2. Decide what each approval is for

Most agencies have one approval step, where a subject matter expert confirms the content is correct. Very few have a second step, where somebody confirms a person can use it.

Those are different questions and they need different approvers. The person guaranteeing legal accuracy has every reason to add qualifiers, not remove them.

Decide whether your model has one approval or 2, and write down what each one is for.

3. Separate review from approval

Approval happens once. Review happens forever, and it is the decision agencies most often leave unmade.

The reviewer is not always the owner. On a large estate the owner answers for one page. The reviewer reads across many, looking for drift the owner cannot see from inside their own section.

An owner who never reads across their neighbours cannot see the drift that matters most.

4. Set the cycle, and name the triggers

Name a frequency and name the triggers. A legislative change, a machinery of government change, a complaint, or a spike in contact centre volume about one topic. Each should pull a review forward.

A review cycle with no triggers is an annual event that arrives 11 months after the content stopped being true.

5. Name the standard, not the aspiration

The Australian Government Style Manual calls itself the definitive resource for Australian Government content. Its force is derivative rather than statutory.

Criterion 3 of the Digital Service Standard asks agencies to comply with it. That Standard covers in-scope digital services. So Style Manual compliance binds those services, not all government content everywhere. Know which one you are.

Accessibility is the harder one. Under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992, inaccessible content can be unlawful. The Australian Human Rights Commission recommends the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2, Level AA, as the minimum.

But the Commission is explicit that its guidelines do not bind. An organisation may not be protected from a finding of unlawful discrimination if it claims it conformed with, or relied on, the Guidelines.

Conformance is evidence that you acted reasonably. It is not a defence.

6. Give the escalation path real powers

Escalation is what happens when the standard and the deadline disagree, which they will.

Name the role a reviewer goes to when a page fails the standard and the program area wants it live anyway. Then name what that role can do. Hold publication. Publish with a dated remediation commitment. Or accept the risk in writing.

An escalation path that only produces a stronger request to the same person is not a path.

7. Set the retirement trigger, and know what has to happen first

Retirement has the largest effect on quality and it is the decision nobody wants to make. Set the trigger in advance. No named owner. Below a stated view threshold over 12 months. No legal or records obligation to stay published.

Then know what has to happen first. Australian Government websites are Commonwealth records under the Archives Act 1983. You cannot decommission an agency public website until the National Library confirms its harvest, or somebody captures and transfers a copy. The disposal classes sit in the Administrative Functions Disposal Authority Express Version 2, Publication.

In the ACT Government consolidation I led, the National Library harvest was the constraint nobody had put in the plan. It has a lead time, and it surfaces late.

That applies to decommissioning a site rather than retiring a page inside a live one. Knowing it before a project needs it is what a governance model is for.

8. Name who answers when it is wrong

Not who fixes it. Who answers for it.

Government content faces scrutiny marketing content never does. Somebody can seek what you published, when, and who approved it, under the Freedom of Information Act 1982. Agencies also have positive publishing duties under the Information Publication Scheme. Records of the decision fall under the Archives Act.

Governance that leaves no defensible trail is not fit for a government context. Decide now what the trail is and where it lives.

Choosing a shape

Three shapes get talked about: centralised, decentralised and hybrid. Worth knowing where that taxonomy comes from. It is usability and vendor literature, not any Australian government instrument. Use it as a thinking tool rather than citing it as guidance.

• Centralise when content carries legal risk, or goes public at scale, and you have a small team that can hold the standard. It protects consistency and creates bottlenecks.

• Decentralise when you have many capable publishers, lower-risk content, and speed matters more than uniformity. It moves fast and drifts without strong shared standards.

• Go hybrid when you need both. Most large agencies land here.

The deciding question is not which is best. It is where you can afford a mistake and where you cannot. Put the tightest control where the consequence is highest.

For an Australian source with standing, read the Australian Government Architecture's web content management policy position. It asks agencies to develop a content strategy and to deliver informational services across digital channels. It also asks them to apply AI ethics principles where AI sits in the content workflow. Read that one if your governance model predates 2025.

What good looks like

• A new staff member can say who owns a page, in under a minute.

• They can say who is allowed to change it, and get the same answer from 2 different colleagues.

• They can name the standard the page has to meet.

• They can say when its next review falls, and what would pull it forward.

• Nowhere in those 4 answers does anyone say it depends who you ask.

Governance is not a document you write once. It is the set of decisions you make on purpose instead of by default.

So take the 8 above. Which ones does your team answer by accident?

Photo by Shubham Dhage on Unsplash.