Clearly written and professionally documented policies and procedures are fundamental to effective correctional management, providing official guidance for decisions and operations. However, good procedures will not be consistently implemented if they are not made available to the correctional professionals on the front line. To make up-to-date versions of procedures immediately available, agencies are increasingly relying on information technology. There are a range of advantages.

• Saving trees: Electronic delivery of procedures eliminates the need to copy or print procedures on paper.
• Automatic update: Procedures are updated by changing a file on a computer. The updated version is immediately available and there is no confusion as to which version of the procedure is currently in force.
• Efficient distribution: Rather than mailing our hundreds of copies of a procedure, employees get procedures on line as they need them.
• Cross-referencing: On-line policies, procedures, and post orders can be cross-referenced without reprinting.

Many correctional agencies provide for electronic availability of procedures through their prisoner record systems. However, a computer system that manages prisoner records is a powerful database management tool that is normally not suited to effectively present your procedures. Integrating web server capabilities into the network provides significant additional advantages that should be considered.

Hypertext access to major web-based resources: Major standards and regulations applicable to correctional agencies are available on the internet. For example, the Standards of the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA), and the Centers for Disease Control Prevention Guidelines Database can be easily linked to your agency procedures, at the point in the procedure where additional information might be helpful.

Hypertext access to government laws and rules: Federal, state, and local laws, rules, and regulations are increasing available on the internet. You can reference these documents in your procedures so that they are available to employees as they need them.

Automatic access to forms: A forms library can be created using technologies such as Adobe Acrobat - the "portable document format" standard that is used by the Internal revenue Service to distribute tax forms. Any time that a procedure calls for a form, the link to the form can be included in the document. The Village of Larchmont, New York as developed a "FormCenter" on their web site at Larchmont Online - a location where all of the forms needed for Village government are conveniently available.

Useful links from related government sites: Your procedures should include links to certain web sites that are increasingly available in most governments:

• central purchasing

• civil service

• employee benefits, including online access to insurance forms

• reporting forms for injuries and health-risk exposures

• legislation, including proposed new laws under consideration

• labor agreements

Links to these sites can be integrated into procedures as references or supporting resources.

Access to procedures from anywhere on the net: If your procedures are available on a web site, employees can access them from anywhere on the internet. You can restrict access when this is appropriate.

Several agencies have published their procedures on their web sites.

• Arizona Department of Corrections Substantive Policy Statements

• Florida Department of Corrections Administrative Rules Since the files are not in hypertext markup language, they are not conveniently available to browsing and no links to other web resources are available in the documents.
• Florida Department of Juvenile Justice Manuals, Policies, and Procedures These manuals can be browsed on the internet because they are available in hypertext format. Several of these manuals concern external organizations such as detention centers and service contractors. The availability of these manuals on the internet could be very helpful to professionals not physically working within agency offices. The manuals also illustrate how links to downloadable forms can be include in a procedure.

• Oklahoma Department of Corrections Policies and Procedures . These are on their web site, with the exception of those relating to security and incident management.

• The South Dakota legislature provides administrative rules on the internet. For example, the Parole Boards rules are available at Parole Board Administrative Rules.

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