Policy Library Project team publishes recommendations report, transitions to implementation

UW–Madison is one step closer to having an online library for all of its university-wide policies.

The project has now entered the implementation phase, and the team is inviting input on what campus constituents need and want from a policy library. To contribute ideas, you can complete the comment form available on the project website.

The Policy Library Project is focused on developing a searchable, online library to make it easier to find university-wide policies at UW–Madison. The project is being managed by the Office of Strategic Consulting.

The Policy Library Project team recently wrapped up the first phase of the project with submission of its report and recommendations (now available on the project website) to the executive sponsors, Provost Karl Scholz and Vice Chancellor for Legal Affairs Ray Taffora.

“Cataloging and organizing campus policies is a massive undertaking, and I am pleased by the progress the team has made. I am deeply grateful for those efforts,” Scholz says.

“This policy library will help identify the array of policies that exist on campus and make compliance with those policies easier,” Taffora says.

Phase one of the project focused on discovery and planning, and included activities such as inventorying university-wide policies, understanding current policy development processes, and peer benchmarking. The implementation phase is focused on preparing to deploy the library during the 2020-21 academic year.

Tasks include cleaning up applicable policies, as needed, to make them “library-ready,” documenting the steps needed for the development of new policies that will become part of the policy library, developing criteria and guidance for the development of new policies that will become part of the new library, identifying software that meets our campus needs, and developing tools and templates to support the policy library.

In addition, the implementation phase includes establishing a working group to develop guidelines that will help integrate the policy library into the existing policy development process on campus. The working group will consist of representatives from across governance and administration.

For more information, go to https://strategicconsulting.wisc.edu/policy-library-project/.