This year’s Compliance & Ethics Week will take place from January 9-13, 2023. The purpose of this event is to raise awareness about compliance-related topics and reinforce ethical values for building a stronger UW. It’s your chance as an office to make sure your day-to-day workflows follow established best practices and follow state, federal, and University legal requirements. And, it’s your chance as an individual to start the year off right!
We’ve teamed up with partner offices across the UW for this event. Together with our partner offices, we’ll provide trainings and resources for you to review and a list of actionable tasks for you to complete. We’ll also be hosting a live Zoom series called “Coffee & Compliance” at 10am each morning of that week covering a range of engaging topics.
Go ahead and block off some time. You can build your knowledge, refresh your understanding, increase awareness of ethical issues, and help reinforce a culture of compliance across the university. Bookmark this page so that you can easily return and watch for new material to be added.
This page is organized into 4 sections:
- Coffee & Compliance Live Events Conversations at 10am each morning during C&E week, covering a range of topics with our partner offices
- Compliance & Ethics Week Tasks Tangible steps you can take to up your compliance game for 2023
- Partner Offices Links Review this wealth of information on important topics from across the UW
- Records Management Self-Assessment
Upcoming Events
Live events are coming in January 2024! Check this space or subscribe to our newsletter for event announcements.
Sign up for our newsletter to learn about future events
Records Management Self-Assessment
We designed these questions to indicate how well you or your department are managing your records. This self-assessment is meant to help identify gaps and provide detailed, specific next actions you can take to improve your compliance with Federal, State, and UW’s records management requirements and best practices. This survey will take less than 10 minutes to complete. At the beginning and end of this form, you will have the opportunity to request your responses to be sent to you via email. This will help you track our recommended next actions for your improved compliance. RMS will not review your responses unless you request us to do so.
Click here to begin the RMS Self-Assessment
Compliance & Ethics Week Tasks
Records Management
- Browse our General Records Retention Schedule or your office’s Departmental Records Retention Schedule to find out when to purge the records in your office. Contact us if you have any questions.
- Commit to disposing of transitory records that no longer have an administrative purpose. Check out this list to get started.
- Consider whether your records are organized in a way that makes it easy to do your work. Take a look at Best Practices for Folder Structures and Recommendations on File/Folder Naming Conventions to identify aspects that could be improved. Email our resident expert if you need any advice.
ADA Coordinator
- Build captioning into all your videos: accessible videos resource
- Review your high use and public documents for accessibility: document accessibility resource
- Use an accessibility checker on your website: website accessibility resource
Office of the Chief Information Security Officer
- Review the Office of the CISO's Security 101 training to learn about threats and best practices.
- Secure your accounts, data, and institutional assets with unique passwords and two-factor authentication (2FA).
- Secure personal and UW data and devices, such as laptops, with encryption and encrypted connections, such as Husky OnNet and eduroam.
Export Controls
- Commit to understanding and identifying potential export limitations before engaging in activities that involve an export. Be aware that exports can include transfers to foreign persons located within the United States. Contact us with any questions.
- Review our guidance on research activities that may be subject to the export control regulations.
Environmental Health & Safety
- Review the University’s Accident Prevention Plan and your department or unit Supplemental Accident Prevention Plan.
- Complete all required and recommended safety training courses.
Human Resources
- Check out required workplace posters regarding employment rights, and viewing locations https://hr.uw.edu/workplace-posters/
- Review these guidelines and processes for providing job performance references: https://hr.uw.edu/policies/providing-work-references-to-prospective-employers/
- All UW employees are required to attend these training sessions, with a few exceptions as noted on the webpage: https://hr.uw.edu/talent/onboarding/required-employee-training/
- Brush up your skills on complaint resolution. The University offers several options for help if you need support in resolving a situation: https://hr.uw.edu/policies/complaint-resolution/
- Learn about the University’s new demographic data use policy of how and when it is appropriate to collect and/or use demographic data, which includes personal information such as home address and gender: https://privacy.uw.edu/reference-materials/policies/demographic-data/)
- Read about ethical standards for UW resources, outside employment, gifts, and conflicts of interest: https://hr.uw.edu/policies/ethics/
Office of Academic Personnel
- Calendar relevant OAP due dates, listed here.
- Place federally required posters and resources in a visible location in the workplace.
- Review OAP’s guide to posting jobs.
- Be aware that RCW 49.58.110, Washington’s revised salary disclosure law, goes into effect January 1, 2023, and requires that job postings include the wage scale or salary range and a general description of all benefits and other compensation for the position.
Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity
- Review the 2022-2026 Diversity Blueprint and discuss how you will localize Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging (DEI&B) efforts with your team.
- Incorporate the Diversity Blueprint into your onboarding plan so that all new employees in your organization are aware of the framework and understand how your team’s DEI&B efforts are in alignment with the document.
- Build DEI&B into your performance planning and evaluation to help ensure alignment and accountability across your organization.
Office of Public Records
- Commit to using your work calendar for work tasks and appointments. Note that your Outlook calendar is a public record. Instead of being very specific about personal appointments on your Outlook Calendar, just put “On hold” or “Not available”.
- Make sure that your personal emails are separate from your work emails. If you have any non-work related subscriptions, unsubscribe to those from your work email and resubscribe using your personal email. For any personal conversations that are not related to work, reply to the person that you would like to continue the conversation using your personal email address.
Office of University Registrar:
- Commit to monitoring all emails to ensure that education records are not being shared as email attachments. Use shared drives instead.
- Follow Record Retention schedules, purge emails that have met their retention.
- Monitor the TO:, CC: and BCC: in emails and do not share education records outside of to the student and/or a school official unless they have a legitimate educational interest (such as they need access to the education records to perform their job) and a need to know.
- When in doubt, don’t give it out! Refer the question or requester to ferpa@uw.edu for the FERPA experts in the Office of the University Registrar to respond.
Privacy:
- Awareness and Accountability: Check that you understand what personal data we have, where it is, and how we use it is fundamental to compliance with privacy requirements. Whether you're just learning about the University's data inventory or well into creating records, continue your data inventory journey. The Privacy Office’s emphasis through February is adding records for third parties (i.e. people and entities outside the University), systems, and business processes that involve youth or human resources data.
- Minimization and Protection: Review how Privacy by Design helps you meet legal and ethical responsibilities and incorporate what you learn right from the start. Consider how you can achieve your workplace goals while minimizing the personal data you gather and retain. Whether you're beginning a data sharing relationship or renewing one, ensure appropriate agreements are in place.
SafeCampus:
- Make sure your office has a listing of emergency contacts for current employees, and that people know where that information is stored.
- Check whether you have listed your personal cell phone in your work email signature. It is better not to include it there so that you can protect the privacy of your personal information. UW-IT has several options for working remotely that do not require you to give out your cell phone number.
- Enter the SafeCampus phone number into your phone so that you have it at your fingertips in case you have a future safety concern: 206-685-7233.
- Check with your colleagues to see if you are interested in requesting a future tailored safety training for your office. If you are, fill out the “Tailored Training Request Form” on this page.
Sustainability
- Opt out of Paper W-2s by visiting this link.
- Take the UW Recycling training to make sure you are on the right track: Intro to Recycling & Waste Diversion at UW Seattle
Title IX
- Refresh your skills for supporting students and employees by viewing the Title IX & Responding with Care video
- Learn about the support and protections available to ensure students and employees who are pregnant or experiencing pregnancy-related conditions are not denied or limited in their access to educational programs or activities.
- If you work within administration, ensure that all your employees have completed the Husky Prevention & Response employee course. Learn more on the Title IX course compliance for unit heads web page.
Youth Protection
- As a UW employee or volunteer, you are a mandated reporter of child abuse and neglect. For a refresher of your responsibilities, review this webpage. Have you taken the required online training? You can find it here.
- Do you lead, host, or engage with youth as part of your UW responsibilities? Review these University requirements for youth programs and research, and register any youth programs or research that you are responsible for.