Nothing to add to the content audit route others have already mentioned, although I can recommend 'The Elements of Content Strategy' as a quick primer to the subject - along with all the other A List Apart books - http://www.abookapart.com/products/the-elements-of-content-strategy
In terms of managing the process and the devolved nature of web publishing my advice would be to move slowly, explain why you want to clean up the website and offer as much help as you can to do it.
When we went through a similar exercise when I worked at Sheffield Hallam (8 or 9 years ago now) we never mentioned a deadline beyond which we might take action to remove content (although that was always the plan).
I underestimated how much individual academics and departments cared about websites that looked very out of date and appeared to get very little (if any) traffic according to our analytics - removing some of them became a very emotional subject for those involved!
We created a Web Publishing Policy that defined what should be published where and got that approved. Then we offered an alternative home for content which wasn't deemed 'appropriate' for the main corporate web servers - http://extra.shu.ac.uk - this allowed people to carry on publishing their pet project, host a conference site or have some server space to play with.
We took a year to migrate/delete content, but it was a relatively painless experience for us and those who had content removed/moved (with a few notable exceptions!) and when we finished we had a clean and tidy corporate website.
Will
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Will DG Cox, Senior Web Manager, Sales & Marketing, learndirect
Dearing House, 1 Young Street, Sheffield S1 4UP
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