While work in response to the challenges of COVID-19 has captured much attention recently, Records Policy and Governance is continuing to make progress on our policy reform work.

We are reforming our policies according to our policy lifecycle process – assess policy environment, prepare draft policy, consultation, approval, communicate and implement policy, and evaluate policy effectiveness and compliance.

Over the past few months, we have been assessing our policy environment through developing business or work processes to understand what we do, what we need to include in our policies and where the gaps in our policies are.

We are also examining the aims of our processes, identifying the standards required and how we meet them, benchmarking our processes against best practice in the sector, and looking at risks, mitigation strategies and key roles and responsibilities. This information will help us draft our principles and guidelines for our new policy groups.

Drafting of the processes, principles and guidelines for our first policy group – Governance Integrity and Standards – is nearly complete and the documents will be distributed to key stakeholders, and then the UNE community, for consultation shortly. Keep an eye out for opportunities to provide feedback.

In the meantime, our Moodle site is live and contains fortnightly updates on progress as well as key project documentation and background. You can also ask questions or provide feedback on any aspect of policy reform. Enrol in the site or search for Records Policy and Governance on Moodle to keep up-to-date on the latest developments.

If you have any further information about the project or have any questions, please contact Ryan Young, Caitlin Rowe or Gabrielle Price on policies@une.edu.au.