Untitled Document

Group aims to put understanding back into
Memorandums of Understanding

Characteristic of any organization that has existed for very long, the pile of agreements between ITD and other partners has only grown through the years. When you consider that we are a government agency, and many of our partners play some version of that role as well, you can safely double or triple the size of that pile. ITD has in excess of 400 agreements.

So it was that during this year's Leadership Summit event, a 13-person team came together to tackle that particular challenge. The team, saddled with the unwieldy formal moniker "Centralize MOU's, MOA's and Other Non-Standard Contracts/Agreements," looked at the policy and practice surrounding the use of Memorandums of Understanding (MOU's) across ITD. The first order of business was to change the group name to something more easily understood and less clunky, so Putting the understanding back into Memorandums of Understanding was born. An alternate was the Mickey MOUse Club.

Research into the department's MOU's and interviews with various ITD business units showed that the current practice was functional but inconsistent across business units and with policy. The policy was also inconsistent with an ITD culture that puts decision-making authority at the level where the work is done.

The first recommendation was to revise the Board Policy and Administrative Policy to allow for:

- The Director to delegate signing authority
- The MOU review to take place at the Business Unit Level
- The MOU review to take place at an interval appropriate to the nature of the document

ITD's Senior Leadership Team has agreed to this, and it goes before the Idaho Transportation Board for formal approval early next year.

The second recommendation was to have a central repository for MOU tracking — "MOUser" (MOU Secure Electronic Repository). The repository would be accessed from the ITD SharePoint and include the following capabilities/functions:

- File-naming Conventions
- Searchable/Reportable
- Notifications
- Security Requirements

MOUser is slated to come online in July 2018.

Watch the MOUser Team video here.