1. Develop, oversee and maintain the university policy-making process, which follows these guiding principles:
    • Be simple and understandable.
    • Be transparent and predictable.
    • Be collaborative and consultative.
      • Ensure consultation with impacted groups by providing consistent opportunities for review and comment at the earliest stages of development by the university community, including faculty and staff governance groups and end users.
      • Utilize existing university and campus channels to the extent possible.
    • Include a review of legal and financial implications of the policy as early in the process as possible. Such review should include, to the extent possible, an analysis of the cost/benefit (including time) and potential risk implications of the proposed policy.
    • Provide a fast-track process for dealing with emergencies and/or other extraordinary circumstances.
    • Clearly outline the roles and responsibilities of each entity involved in the university policy-setting process, including the Office of Policy and Efficiency and University leadership groups.
    • Ensure proper policy alignment with all levels of laws and policies, including Regent Laws and Policies, Administrative Policy Statements and campus policies.
    • Ensure that all new, rescinded and revised Administrative Policy Statements are communicated to those responsible for implementing them and that records and web pages are updated and preserved.
    • Ensure that consideration be given to the appropriate level of training or other educational tools needed for each new policy or policy revision and work with the appropriate training entities to help assess the needs.
    • Allow for appropriate levels of discretion and seek to empower individual decision-making where possible and appropriate.
  2. Coordinate with those involved in the policy-setting process, including policy managers, governance groups, campus representatives, end users, the vice president’s group and other responsible officers from initiation, to development, to implementation, to policy maintenance.
    • Responsibility for policy content resides with the responsible office and/or policy manager.
  3. Manage the policy review and development process, including working with the appropriate system, campus, governance and executive-level representatives.
    • Establish a rigorous process for reviewing policy drafts that involves affected stakeholders at all levels of the university, and across all functions and campuses.
    • Establish adequate and appropriate review by the campuses and end users, General Counsel, Budget and Finance, and other officers of the university, as well as, the appropriate functional areas under the vice presidents.
  4. Work with leadership to make recommendations to address opportunities to streamline and improve processes and procedures to create efficiencies in how system administration serves the campuses.
  5. Support those involved in the policy-setting process, including:
    • Providing research on proposed policies or policy revisions.
      • Check the appropriate source documents to ascertain what policies and related documents exist on the subject, assure that the proposed policy does not conflict with current policies and research whether the proposal affects other existing policies.
      • Research the history of issues connected to the policy and reconcile these with the policy managers.
      • Research available information on best practices.
    • Assisting with policy formatting and editing, as needed.
      • Provide editing and policy coordinating services, including establishing a policy template that offers an easy-to-read document that is consistent with other university policy documents and assist with writing and editing policies.
      • OPE may suggest a revision in a proposed policy or suggest different language to clarify the intent of the policy.
    • Working with the appropriate training units regarding any specific training issues identified during the policy-setting process.
  6. Index, archive and record all historical, current and new policies by maintaining a central repository (database) and official web site for all current university-wide administrative policies.
    • Maintain the OPE website, to include:
      • All current policies and updates on policies being considered, revised and/or rescinded.
      • Establish an easily accessible, user-friendly website for posting and finding universitywide policies, which would help build awareness and increase compliance.
  7. Communicate timely and relevant information regarding new and amended policies to the broader university community.
    • The University of Colorado policy process will involve broad consultation with diverse university constituencies on each of the campuses.
    • A broad announcement of new policies to the university community will help build awareness and compliance.
    • Target communications of new policies to groups specifically affected by policy changes.
  8. Provide policy interpretation and help (i.e., answering general inquiries); seek to be a one-stop shop for general policy questions.
  9. Provide for the regular review of all existing and new policies.
    • Maintain a review schedule for all administrative policy statements and ensure that each active policy has the date of last review clearly identified.
    • Communicate with the policy managers to advise on the status of all policies within their jurisdiction.
    • Assist the policy managers in the review of their existing policies, according to the review schedule.