What is Policy?
- Policies are the rules and instructions that guide or direct DHS employees so they can uniformly and consistently conduct business and administer their duties.
- Rules are statements describing client and provider rights, and they also describe program requirements that must be met by clients, providers and DHS itself. In addition, they describe the procedures and practices DHS staff must follow because they directly affect clients, vendors and the general public.
- Instructions are statements that provide the information necessary to comply with the rules.
The Oklahoma Administrative Code
The Oklahoma Administrative Code (OAC) requires DHS policy to be written in a prescribed format as a means of ensuring uniformity and consistency at the policy level. If our policies did not follow a pattern we could easily learn to use, our jobs would be much more difficult, if not impossible.
Uniformity ensures all clients and providers are treated fairly and equally. It also eliminates questions about what needs to be done and who needs to do it. Uniformity makes certain discrimination is avoided, and supports the actions of employees.
Consistency ensures every employee handles similar situations in a similar fashion, so clients and providers can expect to meet the same requirements for benefits and services no matter where they happen to be within the state.
The Oklahoma Administrative Code assigns a Title Number for each State Agency.
Policies for Health Benefits programs will generally be located in the OHCA policy sections, while policies for DHS programs such as TANF and SNAP will be found under Title 340.
Under the OAC format, policies (or rules) are broken into five general parts.
Look at this example of OAC formatting: 340:50-5-67(3).
340 = the title number; in this case the title number for DHS
50 = the chapter number; in this case SNAP
5 = the subchapter number; in this case Non-Financial Eligibility
67 = the section number; in this case Citizenship
(3) = the paragraph number; in this case Eligible Aliens
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