Abolish the intranet steering committee?

I met a company last week who told me that had abolished their senior management intranet steering committee. They said their intranet was mature now, was an accepted way of working, and that the committee no longer had reasons to meet.

I understand this reasoning but fear it is short-sighted. If I were the intranet manager in that company, I would be very worried about who would make future strategic decisions such as:

• Should we integrate blogs into the intranet, and how should we define our internal blogging strategy?
• Should we invest the budget in upgrading our search engine? What value will we get from that?
• How should we respond to our user survey saying that out-of-date content is a big problem?
• Who is responsible for ensuring that user needs are met?
• What degree of accountability should regional and local managers have for content and strategy?
• How are intranet responsibilities best integrated into job descriptions and performance reviews?
• What's the right balance between personalisation and customisation for our home page?
• And so on and so on.

Basically, I'm saying that no matter how "mature" the intranet is, it will always need a decision-making body capable of setting strategy, defining priorities, allocating resources and above all, ensuring that decisions are implemented and that the right people are held accountable.

As mentioned in my post "Intranet is  process", it is not something that reaches a point where strategic decision-making no longer has its place.

I suspect the company who told me they had abolished the intranet steering committee has other issues - probably political - in the background.

Comments

[Stephan]

You're absolutly right: an Intranet is never finished or even mature. Acting as if it was, means taking the first step towards the decline of your Intranet.
From my expierence this attitude is taking by management when they feel that they have invested "enough" in their Intranet and are not too sure about the benefits it offers in return.