Gender Recognition and Lived Name policy (GRLN)

June 20, 2023

The Gender Recognition and Lived Name (GRLN) policy affects how Open Berkeley website account usernames are updated and displayed.

GRLN policy and Open Berkeley

In accordance with the Gender Recognition and Lived Name (GRLN) policy, the data source for account usernames on the Open Berkeley platform now uses the "displayname" attribute from the campus directory. Starting on June 20, 2023, this attribute will be pulled from UC Path (for employees) or SIS (Student Information Systems, for students).

This represents the Lived Name, which must be used in all campus systems and communications except in the rare cases where a legal name is required. The deadline for all systems to implement this policy is December 31, 2023.

Account usernames

On Open Berkeley sites, account usernames are visible to logged-in site builders, editors, and contributors in several locations: in the Content dashboard and on edit screens; in the list of revisions for content items; and on the user accounts page. They are not generally visible to anonymous visitors to your sites, but there are some configurations of listings widgets which may show the account username as the author of a specific content item.

As a result of GRLN policy implementation, some account usernames on Open Berkeley sites will change. Open Berkeley will check for updated names when users log in to their accounts, and also periodically after June 20.

Along with this policy update, it will no longer be possible to update names in "downstream" systems such as the Berkeley campus directory or your Open Berkeley site. All updates to names must be made in the appropriate system of record (UC Path or SIS). It may take a few days for name changes to propagate to all the campus systems that use names, including Open Berkeley website user accounts.

Names in your website's content

Open Berkeley sites may include names of Berkeley employees or students in addition to account usernames. For example, people's names may appear in News items, staff directories, the People feature, and other content.

We recommend that Open Berkeley site users do the following in accordance with the GRLN policy:

  • review their content and ensure that they are using the appropriate Lived Name for anyone whose name appears in the content of the site; and
  • provide a way for people to notify them of changes to their Lived Name.

All content updates are the responsibility of the site owner and builders; Open Berkeley will only provide automatic updates for account usernames.