Terms of Use

Policies are typically promulgated through official written documents. Policy documents
often come with the endorsement or signature of the executive powers within an
organization to legitimize the policy and demonstrate that it is considered in force. Such
documents often have standard formats that are particular to the organization issuing the
policy. While such formats differ in form, policy documents usually contain certain
standard components including:
• A purpose statement, outlining why the organization is issuing the policy, and what
its desired effect or outcome of the policy should be.
• An applicability and scope statement, describing who the policy affects and which
actions are impacted by the policy. The applicability and scope may expressly
exclude certain people, organizations, or actions from the policy requirements.
Applicability and scope is used to focus the policy on only the desired targets, and
avoid unintended consequences where possible.
• An effective date which indicates when the policy comes into force. Retroactive
policies are rare, but can be found.
• A responsibilities section, indicating which parties and organizations are
responsible for carrying out individual policy statements. Many policies may require
the establishment of some ongoing function or action. For example, a purchasing
policy might specify that a purchasing office be created to process purchase
requests, and that this office would be responsible for ongoing actions.

Responsibilities often include identification of any relevant oversight and/or
governance structures.
• Policy statements indicating the specific regulations, requirements, or modifications
to organizational behavior that the policy is creating. Policy statements are
extremely diverse depending on the organization and intent, and may take almost
any form.
Some policies may contain additional sections, including:
• Background, indicating any reasons, history, and intent that led to the creation of
the policy, which may be listed as motivating factors. This information is often quite
valuable when policies must be evaluated or used in ambiguous situations, just as
the intent of a law can be useful to a court when deciding a case that involves that
law.
• Definitions, providing clear and unambiguous definitions for terms and concepts
found in the policy document.