- The site or application's owner or sponsor is accountable for compliance with all legal and institutional requirements.
The owner or sponsor confirms this by signing the User Access Guidelines form, which is a prerequisite for accessing digital communications services at McGill. The owner or sponsor must ensure that the site or application is obtained and used in a way that respects all applicable IT and Procurement policies. If an external vendor's work is used, the owner is responsible for validating compliance with legal and institutional requirements before accepting the work.
As a public institution, McGill is part of the Quebec Government's Bug Bounty Program (officially called the Programme de prime aux bogues du gouvernement du Québec). This program encourages civic-minded hackers and IT security researchers to find and report security issues on public websites like ours. If a genuine bug is found on your website(s), the site owner may be responsible for paying the person who found it and resolving the bug in an appropriate timeframe. The fee (which can be up to $3,000) and resolution timeframe will vary based on the nature of the bug.
- The owner or sponsor may nominate site managers (also called content administrators, site editors, publishers, etc.) who will be responsible for the day-to-day work on the site or application.
Site managers are accountable to the owner or sponsor for compliance with the digital standards and other requirements. All content and configuration tasks they undertake must maintain compliance. They will need to take all required Web Services courses for their role, and sign the User Access Guidelines form. In most cases, site managers are McGill employees and help the owner or sponsor to monitor project compliance as a whole.
- Professional web designers and developers (either in-house, freelance, or agency) are responsible for the design, coding, and maintenance of custom projects.
These technical professionals are also accountable to the owner or sponsor, and must ensure that the design, development, and ongoing maintenance of the site or application respects the requirements above. For freelancers or agencies, it's important to include all requirements in contracts, vendor agreements, or statements of work. In-house and contracted professionals may also consult with the Web Services team for evaluations and support (subject to availability).