As part of Michigan's response to the NCAA, the university has taken steps to ensure that communications issues between its athletic compliance department and football staff have been resolved.

Most notably, school officials have shifted responsibility of filing of Countable Athletically Related Activities (CARA) forms and how department employees deal with administrative, non-coaching staffers.

Michigan’s compliance department will now review any “full-time temporary employees” the university hires and those people must attend a NCAA rules orientation session and sign the same agreement other administrative staff members sign.

“Non-coaching, sport-specific staff,” a group that includes quality-control coaches and administrative specialists, will attend a separate rules education meeting. 

Also, the university put in place an policy “to communicate delays regarding submission of compliance forms, including CARA forms, to the head coach, Director of Athletics and the University President,” the university’s report said.

That comes in response to problems Michigan compliance officers Ann Vollano and Judy Van Horn had in obtaining CARA forms and job description forms from football staff members Scott Draper and Brad Labadie.

According to the report, Van Horn informed former athletic director Bill Martin about issues with the football team’s CARA forms in January, March and April 2009.

“The thing that will never happen again is that we will never have people at the lower end of the chain of command having discussions about things not happening,” Michigan athletic director Dave Brandon said Tuesday morning, “and those discussions not getting passed up the chain of command.”

Michigan instituted a change in its CARA forms. From now on, forms will indicated the time activities occurred instead of the temp spent each day on certain activities.

The other issue in the CARA form allegation was Rodriguez’ apparent lack of knowledge about the school’s monitoring policies in regard to CARA.

Michigan simplified the CARA process by selecting a “random subset” of athletes to sign the forms instead of every athlete in every sport. In addition, the university is planning on using a “comprehensive athletic compliance Web-based software system” including monitoring CARA anonymously.

The Michigan compliance office has also increased its visits to different sports’ practices and off-season workouts to help monitor CARA rules.

Michael Rothstein covers University of Michigan sports for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at (734) 623-2558, by e-mail at michaelrothstein@annarbor.com or follow along on Twitter @mikerothstein.