The Sunset Schedule 2.2.5-1

Purpose

The sunset schedule is the organizational register that tracks every standing policy alongside its justification, review date, and evidence standard for renewal. It is the institutional equivalent of the individual assumptions register (2.2.1) and the team practice audit (2.2.4-1) — a maintenance document that prevents policies from outliving the conditions that justified them.

Format

Each entry in the sunset schedule contains six fields:

Policy name. State it concretely. "Travel pre-approval requirement for expenses over $500." Not "our travel policy."

Date enacted. When the policy was adopted.

Original justification. The problem the policy was created to solve, stated in terms of the evidence that supported its adoption. "Q3 2023 audit revealed $140K in unapproved travel expenses with no documentation trail."

Review date. The date at which the policy will be evaluated against current evidence. For policies with significant compliance costs, this should be annual. For lower-impact policies, biannual or triennial may be appropriate. No policy should go more than three years without review.

Evidence standard for renewal. What must the policy demonstrate to earn continuation? "Travel expense complaints reduced by at least 50% from pre-policy baseline and compliance costs do not exceed $X per quarter." The evidence standard must be specific enough that the renewal decision can be made on data, not on institutional inertia.

Schedule owner. The named person or committee responsible for triggering the review on time and ensuring that the evidence standard is applied honestly.

How to Build It

Most organizations implementing the sunset schedule for the first time will face a backlog: dozens or hundreds of standing policies with no documented justification, no review date, and no renewal standard. The approach is triage, not comprehensive cataloguing.

Phase 1 — High-cost policies. Identify the ten policies with the highest compliance costs (staff time, budget, operational friction) and enter them into the schedule first. For policies whose original justification is unknown, record "origin unknown" and set the review date within six months. Unknown origin does not mean the policy is bad. It means the policy must re-justify itself under current evidence.

Phase 2 — New policies. Every new policy adopted after the schedule is established enters the schedule at the time of adoption. No exceptions. This prevents the backlog from growing while the existing stock is being addressed.

Phase 3 — Remaining stock. Work through the remaining policy stock at a sustainable pace, adding entries to the schedule as bandwidth permits. The goal is complete coverage within 18–24 months of initial adoption.

The Review Process

When a policy reaches its review date, the schedule owner initiates an evaluation:

1. Evidence collection. Gather data on the policy's effectiveness against its stated evidence standard. If no data exists, that is itself a finding — a policy that cannot be measured cannot be evaluated, and its continuation is an act of faith, not method.

2. Evaluation. Three outcomes: renew (the evidence standard is met and the policy's justification remains current), revise (the evidence is mixed or conditions have changed), sunset (the evidence standard is not met or the original problem no longer exists).

3. Decision and documentation. Record the evaluation outcome, the evidence considered, and the reasoning. If the policy is renewed, set a new review date and update the evidence standard if conditions have changed. If the policy is sunset, document the transition — what replaces it, if anything, and how affected parties are notified.

What the Schedule Prevents

The sunset schedule prevents policy accumulation — the gradual, invisible increase in organizational regulation that occurs when policies are created in response to problems but never removed when the problems resolve. Over time, policy accumulation produces institutional sclerosis: the organization becomes slower, more complex, and less responsive — not because any individual policy is wrong, but because the aggregate weight exceeds the institution's capacity to carry it.

The schedule also prevents zombie policies — policies that remain on the books but are no longer enforced, creating ambiguity about which rules actually govern behavior. Zombie policies are dangerous not because they are enforced, but because they can be — selectively, inconsistently, and often in ways that serve institutional convenience rather than institutional purpose.