A Compilation of Contributions

ACUPA’s Blog Committee would like to take this opportunity to reintroduce members to our blog, Policy Matters ! Policy Matters launched in 2018 taking the place of ACUPAexchange , a triannual newsletter publication. The original purpose of the blog was to address the needs of our members and maximize the efficiency of our processes. To highlight the efforts of current and past Blog Committee members, as well as volunteer contributors, all posts published since the inception of the blog have been organized alphabetically into categories based on theme and are linked below for easy access.

ACUPA (General)

ACUPA Blog Committee Welcomes Policy Experts

ACUPA Website Features

Welcome to the New Blog!

Accessibility

Are Your Policies Accessible? Part 1: An Introduction to Web Accessibility

Are Your Policies Accessible? Part 2: Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Are Your Policies Accessible? Part 3: Automating Accessibility in Custom Word Templates

Are Your Policies Fully Available to Your Stakeholders?

Hybrid/Remote Work

Adapt to an Online Environment to Develop Policies

And Now We Zoom...

Hybrid Work Schedules

Pivot to a Remote Work Environment

Pandemic and Policy

A Sea of Change and a Pandemic

Campus Changes in Light of the Coronavirus

Moving toward a New Normal

Policy Changes on Steroids and I'm Over It

Policy Matters Open Forum Covid

To Vax, or not to Vax

Policy in the News

Policy in the News (2023)

Policy in the News (2022)

Policy in the News (2021)

Policy in the News (2020)

Policy in the News (2019)

The Policy Process

Always Getting Better

Benchmarking Policies

Choose Your Words Carefully

Do I Really Need a Policy and Procedure?

Do You Cite References in Policy?

Do you evaluate your policy objectives?

Expediting Policies to Address Organizational Risks

Inclusive Policy Development

Increase Awareness of and Participation in Policy Development

Let's Talk About Procedures!

Organizing a Policy Catalog

Our Language Matters

Policies as More than Rules

Policy Development – Are Templates Required?

Policies Requiring Public Review and Comment

Project Management

The First Element

What Is a Policy?

When Your Steering Committee Fails to Steer

Where Does Your Policy Function Belong?

Where have all the Policies Gone? Part I

Where have all the Policies Gone? Part II

Roles and Responsibilities of Policy Professionals

Beyond the Policy Administrators Role

Defining Career Success

Other Duties as Assigned

So, What Do You Do?

What it Takes to be an Effective Policy Administrator

What’s In Your Policy Closet?

Software, Programs, and Digitization

Behind the Scenes of Policy Data

Customize Your Microsoft Word Experience (I)

Customize Your Microsoft Word Experience (II)

Easily Convert Web Pages to PDF Format

In Search of Innovation

Policy Administration for the Digital Age

Version Control, Auto Saving, and Collaborative Editing

Title IX

Historical View of Title IX

Title IX Officers are the People Who Stay Awake at Night

Miscellaneous

Bereavement Leave

Betting on College Sports

Equity Review at Georgia Gwinnett College

Is Technology Dictating Policy?

Is Your Institution Ready for the Robot Invasion?

Learning and Love

"Operation Varsity Blues": High Stakes Testing in College Admissions

Policy and Political Activism

Protecting Essential Records -- Key to Surviving a Catastrophe

Reducing Risks to Institutional Data

Student Interns as Valued Employees

The Joining of Two Community Colleges

The Power of P3s

The Robots are Coming

The Violence of the Last Six Months

Thoughts on Retirement

Values in Action

As was stated in the inaugural blog post, we continue to appeal to you, our members, to help us evolve and decide whether the information shared in the featured posts are relevant and interesting. Do you have an idea for a blog post? Ultimately, this blog is for you, our members, and your submissions are encouraged and welcomed! If you are interested in contributing as a guest (maybe you are interested in being interviewed to share your own experiences as a policy professional), becoming a member of the Blog Committee, or want to share an idea for a topic to be explored through a post, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Can a policy management system track as well as I can?

The views expressed in this post are solely those of the author and do not represent the views of ACUPA or Purdue University.

I track a fair amount of data with each of the policies in the Purdue University policy library. Currently, I use Excel to manually track all my data. Even to me, this seems a bit archaic with the variety of policy management systems out there. I have looked at a couple vendors, but have stopped short of pursuing a contract because I am afraid I won’t be able to capture all my data.

Some data are pretty standard, such as the date of issue, the responsible executive, the responsible office, and the volume and chapter (see my post from October 2020 on Organizing a Policy Catalog to learn more about the last two). It’s easy to designate a field that captures these data. It is also easy to track the date a policy was last revised. Even systems that are not designed exclusively for policy management can track version dates.

Where I run into trouble is finding a way to automatically track the last date a policy was reviewed. Policies get revised all the time. Titles, phone numbers, and email addresses change frequently, which require an update to the affected policy, and thus, a new version date. Most of the time, however, these small administrative updates do not coincide with a comprehensive review of the policy. If I were to use the version date to determine when a policy is due for review, I would likely have a lot of policies that never get reviewed because the version date never falls outside the review period (which, at Purdue, is every five years).

I also get tripped up when a policy supersedes another policy. This can happen for a number of reasons, such as the title of the policy changing, two policies being combined into one or vice versa, old memos being updated into policies, etc. With my Excel spreadsheet, I am able to track a current policy all the way back to its origin, even if that is a memo from 1952. I can tell you the name and number of the policy or memo that addressed a given subject on a given date, and I can find a copy of that document in our e-archives. I have not had to track anything back to 1952, but I have had instances when our legal counsel needed all the versions of a policy going back several years. I just don’t see how a system could track this kind of serpentine information.

Last, but not least, we allow for interim policies. This means a policy can go into effect without having gone through all the required steps. The policy owner then has six months to finish all the steps and finalize the policy, or request an extension of the interim status. I mark policies as interim and track the six-month deadline in Excel. It seems to me that I would have to continue to track this sort of thing manually even if I had a policy management system.

Maybe I am making things too complicated. Maybe I need to let something go. What do you think?

What It Means to Have an Effective Policy Program

Have you ever written a policy that took hours of research, conversations, and meetings and years to get approved? Then, months or even years are dedicated to implementation and operationalizing the policy. Program evaluation can take place at various stages of the policy process to assess progress, milestones, and data amongst other things. Then what? When do you evaluate your policy and related programs and how?

The most common stage for program evaluation to take place is the evaluation and termination stage, when policies are evaluated against how successful they were at meeting their objectives (Fischer, Miller, & Sidney, 2007). Program evaluations focus on the inputs (resources) and outputs because program implementations are meant to be successful and require resources, which are increasingly scarce. Focusing on the level of resources used against the outcomes is important to funders. In other words, what did we get for our money? Over the years, evidence-based reporting has increased in popularity amongst public and nonprofit sectors (Emerson, 2009). Organizations need to show apparent, demonstrated and proven effectiveness. Apparent effectiveness is the short-term result, indicating, through documentation, the program is being utilized (Emerson, 2009). Demonstrated effectiveness refers to measuring the impact of the program (Emerson, 2009). Lastly, proven effectiveness, a scientifically proven measurement of a program’s success (Emerson, 2009). Both demonstrated and proven effectiveness utilize a third party evaluator to gauge the effectiveness (Emerson, 2009).

After our last policy implementation, we regrouped with our customers and discussed areas for continued refinement, improvement, and revisions. Even though we sought input and held focus groups prior to implementation, we still had opportunity to improve.

As you prepare your next policy implementation, think ahead to how you evaluate your program. Can you deliver evidence-based reporting? Can you demonstrate the public policy need was met? To find out, engage with your stakeholders and customers before, during, and after to seek feedback. If data is available to help evaluate, utilize that as well.

References

• Emerson, J. (2009). But does it work? How to best assess program performance. Stanford Social Innovation Review, 29-30.
• Fischer, F., Miller, G. J., & Sidney, M. S. (2007). Handbook on public policy analysis. Boca Raton: CRC Press.