Change Request Guidelines
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Typical Guide Memo Changes
The two types of changes typically made to Administrative Guide Memos:
- Policy: Any change to policy content or a change that affects how the policy is administered or interpreted. This includes changes to university organization charts, such as a title change or a reporting structure change.
- Housekeeping: Changes or corrections that do not change policy content or interpretation, such as correcting a typo or updating contact information, phone numbers, URLs, or addresses.
Those Authorized to Request Changes
A new Guide Memo or a change to an existing Guide Memo can only be requested by the person who has approval authority for the contents (also known as the “policy owner”), or that person’s designee. Written approval from the policy owner/responsible university officer is required to publish a policy update. For housekeeping changes that do not affect the policy content, a designee with knowledge of the change needed is authorized to send a request.
How to initiate an Administrative Guide policy update
- The policy owner or designee notifies the Administrative Guide Editor that changes are planned by emailing guide-editor@lists.stanford.edu.
- The policy owner or designee creates a Word document (see below) of the current policy and uses Track Changes to make the needed changes/edits directly on the Word document (Google documents are not currently accepted).*
- Typically, the policy owner or designee will have a group of employees in that school or unit to review the changes and include anyone with responsibility for the policy discussed in the Guide Memo, or someone who is charged with communicating or interpreting the Guide Memo to others.
- If there are other groups outside your department with joint responsibility for the policy, it is advised to include a representative from that group(s) in the review process.
- Email the revised Guide Memo as an attachment to the Guide Editor along with a copy of the approval from the policy owner. Once the changes have been made, a confirmation is sent to the requestor, asking them to review the changes. A subsequent announcement will be sent to the subscribers of the guide-updates email list and a summary of the change will be added to the What's New page.
To request a new policy be added to the Administrative Guide
- Submit the approved draft and approval to the Guide Editor. The Editor will send the document to the Liaison Group for review and approval. This group consists of all Guide Memo authorities/owners, members of the Stanford legal staff, and other senior staff. Typically, there is a 10-day review period for new policies. Liaison members with questions are directed to the subject matter expert who submitted the new policy.
- Once the Guide Memo has been reviewed by the Liaison Group, the Editor makes a final clean copy, reviews the content for language, and then sends it to the Guide Memo’s authority/owner for written approval and authorization to post.
- Once the policy has been published, an announcement will be sent to the subscribers of the guide-updates email list and a summary of the change will be added to the What's New page.
How to create a Word document from an Administrative Guide policy webpage
- Click the "Print this policy" link in the right-hand column
- Click "Cancel" on the printer pop-up window
- "Select All"
- Copy and paste to a new Word doc and if requesting changes, turn on "Track Changes"
*Not required for housekeeping changes.