Roles and policies are used to provide display and access to data in a flexible manner. Users and/or web applications can be mapped to user roles that dictate which displays or other application resources are available to the user or application. Roles are assigned to web applications individually, allowing for user roles to be used without requiring an independent mapping of users to roles. In some cases, application roles can be centrally managed, so that presentation systems also avoid the need for an independent mapping of user or application roles.