This issue is always brought up at semester-or-fiscal-year-end because it’s the time that a lot of policies change.

Case in point – we recently changed a policy university-wide. A communication went out from the university to change the policy on individual college or unit Web sites.

Just for kicks, I ran a quick check for the policy on our university internal site search to see how many places the policy showed up. 1,119 internal pages (most at different internal Web sites or sub-domains) contain the name of the policy. Granted, some of those probably link directly to the main university page that contains the policy. What I found, though, is that a *lot* don’t.

I checked out the first 3 results pages of that search. The first 2 results didn’t even belong to the *main* policy page , but that’s another post for another time. Almost all pages that included the text also included the policy itself (of those on the first 3 results pages). So, there are literally 10, 20, 30, 100? iterations of the same policy within the different university Web sites. 

This doesn’t just happen at Penn State, obviously. I looked on 6 different Big Ten school Web sites for the same policy. The same thing is happening on *all* of those Web sites I checked.

Yes, the policy makers (or messengers) sent out communications for Web sites to update the policy. Do you really think every site will do that in a timely manner? 

Are there university standards saying that you have to *link* to policies, not duplicate the policy on your Web site? Maybe. Maybe not. 

Where there seems to be a lot of this happening is on different college Web sites. For instance, the College of Engineering or the College of Mathematics Web sites will re-iterate an admissions policy instead of linking to the policy on the admissions Web site. 

Those same college Web sites say the same policy on an admission requirements *page* within the Web site and also an *FAQ* page as well. So the duplication may be happening twice within the same college or unit Web site.

Then, when the policy changes and they aren’t all updated, there is inconsistent content and confused users.

Obviously everything isn’t cut and dry. For instance, a policy may be slightly different depending on the user (audience). 

There are *many* policies that are the same for everyone (or the same for *big buckets of users* – for instance, all undergraduate or all graduate), however. 

For our sanity and for our users sake, shouldn’t we house policies in one appropriate place and link to those policies instead of duplicating them on each sub-site within the University?