Building Accountability in Policy Management

Does your organization lack an auditable means of policy communication, attestation and training? In today’s complex legal and regulatory environment, organizations must provide full visibility into who accessed a policy, accepted it, was trained on it, and passed or failed quizzes to gauge understanding — all things that provide the organization with a stronger defensible situation with regulators and in legal actions.

Organizations that approach policy management and communication without clear accountability and audit trails face significant risk to their business. This accountability applies to policy owners for their ongoing review and maintenance of policy, the process of granting exceptions, monitoring incidents and violations of policies and extends to policy governance to track reading, acceptance, and training on an individual basis.

Accountability in policy compliance and enforcement is made possible by three primary key functional capabilities that provide a system of record of policy activities:

1. A Policy Lifecycle Management that governs the process of policy management and communication with clear accountabilities and tasks assigned to individuals.\
2. A Policy Management Committee to govern the oversight and guidance of policies to ensure policy collaboration and engagement across the enterprise.
3. An individual assigned to the role of Policy Manager to assure accountability across the policy lifecycle to the standards, style, and process defined by the Policy Management Committee.

Effective policy management provides the structure and connective tissue to coordinate and drive consistency across the organization and is comprised of team members that represent the best interest and expertise of the different parts of the organization.

Policy management that addresses accountability brings integrity and value to policy management. It provides accountability to policy management processes that are often scattered across the organization. In today’s environment, ignoring accountability in policy management means processes, partners, employees, and systems that behave like leaves blowing in the wind. Policy management processes are constantly in disarray when operating autonomously, introducing risk in today’s complex, dynamic, and distributed business environment. Organizations require an enterprise view of policy accountability and collaboration that not only brings together silos but integrates them into a common policy-management process.