{ "pulledAt": "2026-09-18", "nodes": [ { "key": "Goal", "zone": "Engine", "order": 1, "entryNoun": "Goal", "tagLine": "What is this for, and what does it stand for?", "coreAsk": "What is this trying to do, for whom, and over what time horizon?", "description": "What this PB system is trying to produce: the change it is after, for whom, and over what time horizon. Goals point the system somewhere.", "what": "What this system is trying to produce: the change it is after, for whom, and over what time horizon. Goals point the system somewhere.", "soWhat": "Without a goal you are only measuring activity against itself, PB for its own sake, and a system that promises more while delivering less deepens the disillusion it was meant to cure. The goal is the reference every other node gets tested against, which is why it belongs first even though experienced diagnosers often skip it.", "dimensions": [ { "name": "Goal", "keyColumn": true, "multiSelect": false, "help": "Name this goal so the row means something on its own.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [] }, { "name": "Goal type", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": false, "help": "What kind of change the PB system is attempting to produce.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "Project-level", "description": "Things get built or funded that wouldn't have been otherwise." }, { "name": "Capacity-level", "description": "Relationships, leadership, infrastructure get built." }, { "name": "Trust-level", "description": "Institutional standing or relationships shift." }, { "name": "Cultural-level", "description": "Norms or expectations change about how decisions get made." } ] }, { "name": "Beneficiary", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": false, "help": "Who the goal is meant to serve. Distinct from Priority Audiences, which is about who the PB system explicitly centers in its design.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "Direct participants", "description": "People who engage directly with the PB system." }, { "name": "A defined community", "description": "Residents, students, members — the broader population the system is operating on behalf of." }, { "name": "Specific marginalized groups", "description": "Groups the goal explicitly serves. Related to but distinct from Priority Audiences (which is about who the PB system centers in its design)." }, { "name": "The institution itself", "description": "Capacity-building or legitimacy for the convening institution." } ] }, { "name": "Time horizon", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": false, "help": "When the goal is meant to land.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "This cycle", "description": "The goal is meant to be achieved within the current cycle." }, { "name": "Multi-cycle", "description": "The goal compounds across multiple cycles." }, { "name": "Generational", "description": "Intergenerational shifts in civic capacity, trust, expectations." } ] } ], "questions": [ { "text": "If it funded zero projects but built lasting civic infrastructure, what would still be some successes?", "order": 1, "spicy": false, "rationale": "Surfaces whether project-level outcomes are the real goal or whether the deeper goal is capacity, trust, or cultural change. Many systems claim capacity or trust as goals but design entirely around project-level outcomes." }, { "text": "Does this move real decision-making power over money, or keep it where it already sits?", "order": 2, "spicy": true, "rationale": "Surfaces whether the PB system meaningfully shifts who decides how money gets spent, or whether it preserves the existing concentration of decision-making power while looking participatory. The canvas-reader makes the judgment." }, { "text": "What evidence exists that your goal is being achieved, and what evidence exists that it isn't? (If you're more than a couple of cycles in, point to specifics.)", "order": 3, "spicy": true, "rationale": "Forces disconfirming evidence, the half people never volunteer. Stated success is cheap; evidence that it is not working is the honest test. Gated lightly so early-stage systems are not punished for thin evidence." }, { "text": "If this system has more than one goal, can it really serve them all? Does a hierarchy exist among the stated goals?", "order": 4, "spicy": true, "rationale": "Promoted from the old multiplicity disclaimer. Many charters list several goals joined by \"and.\" This forces the system to admit whether it can actually serve them all, and to name the hierarchy it is pretending not to have." } ] }, { "key": "Values", "zone": "Engine", "order": 2, "entryNoun": "Value", "tagLine": null, "coreAsk": "What does this stand for, and what will it not trade away?", "description": "What this PB system stands for: the behaviors it wants to see more of, and the lines it will not cross getting to its goals. Where goals point the system somewhere, values set the constraints on how it gets there. A value that shapes no design choice is decoration.", "what": "What this system stands for: the behaviors it wants more of, and the lines it will not cross reaching its goal.", "soWhat": "Goals point the system somewhere; values constrain how it gets there, and where the two collide the values are what hold. A value that shapes no design choice on this canvas is decoration, so the honest test of any value here is which concrete choices exist because of it.", "dimensions": [ { "name": "Named values", "keyColumn": true, "multiSelect": false, "help": "The values the PB system explicitly claims to operate by. Framed as behaviors you want to see more of: concrete and observable rather than abstract.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "Equity", "description": "Distributing resources, attention, and decision-making according to need and historical exclusion." }, { "name": "Inclusion", "description": "People feeling like they belong in the PB system and have real influence over what happens." }, { "name": "Transparency", "description": "Information about the PB system is visible to everyone it affects." }, { "name": "Accountability", "description": "Actors are answerable for what they said they would do, and there are consequences when they don't." }, { "name": "Dignity", "description": "Treating participants' time, experience, and contributions with respect." }, { "name": "Stewardship", "description": "Caring for the PB system, its resources, and its participants beyond any one cycle." }, { "name": "Trust", "description": "Acting in ways that warrant being trusted and extending trust to others to do the same." }, { "name": "Self-determination", "description": "People deciding for themselves about things that affect them." }, { "name": "Solidarity", "description": "Standing with and acting alongside others, especially across difference." }, { "name": "Justice", "description": "Repairing harm and addressing structural inequities through how the PB system operates." }, { "name": "Belonging", "description": "People feeling rooted in the PB system, like it is theirs." }, { "name": "Voice", "description": "People being heard and having their input meaningfully reflected in outcomes." }, { "name": "Shared power", "description": "Decision-making distributed across actors rather than concentrated." }, { "name": "Deliberative quality", "description": "Conversations are substantive, considered, and shape what happens next." }, { "name": "Sustainability", "description": "The PB system can keep running over time without burning out the people or resources it depends on." }, { "name": "Care", "description": "Attending to people's needs, including the ones they don't name." }, { "name": "Safety", "description": "People can participate without fear of retaliation, surveillance, or harm." } ] }, { "name": "Source of values", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": false, "help": "Where the values come from. Matters because values held by different actors carry different weight in shaping a PB system.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "Convener-stated", "description": "Values claimed by the institution running the PB system." }, { "name": "Partner-stated", "description": "Values brought in by one or more partner organizations." }, { "name": "Community-surfaced", "description": "Values that emerged from participants or the broader constituency, often through deliberation or organizing." }, { "name": "Inherited", "description": "Values carried over from a prior PB system, adjacent work, or a movement tradition." }, { "name": "Externally imposed", "description": "Values required by an external funder, mandate, or sector norm rather than chosen internally." } ] }, { "name": "Status", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": false, "help": "How active and consequential the named values actually are.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "Lived", "description": "The value visibly shapes design choices and tradeoffs." }, { "name": "Aspirational", "description": "The value is claimed but not yet operationalized in design choices, but is working towards that." }, { "name": "Performative", "description": "The value is named for legitimacy or signaling, but stops informing the process after being named." } ] } ], "questions": [ { "text": "Which design choices on this canvas exist because of these values? If a value disappeared, what elsewhere would change?", "order": 1, "spicy": false, "rationale": "The behavioral test for values. A value that shapes no design choice is performative. Tracing each value to the choices it drives, and asking what would collapse without it, shows whether the values are doing real work." }, { "text": "When two of these values pull against each other, which one gives?", "order": 2, "spicy": false, "rationale": "Values lists are easy to write because nobody stacks them against each other. Equity and speed conflict; inclusion and decisiveness conflict. This forces the ranking that real decisions expose." }, { "text": "What activities are most in tension with these values?", "order": 3, "spicy": true, "rationale": "Connects values to Activities directly. A value of inclusion sits in tension with a vote-only decision activity. Surfaces where the system's own behavior contradicts what it says it stands for." }, { "text": "How do people with less power in this system experience these values, compared to people with more power?", "order": 4, "spicy": true, "rationale": "The same stated value lands differently depending on where you sit. Transparency can mean reassurance to a convener and surveillance to a participant. Tests whether the values hold from the bottom of the power gradient, not just the top." } ] }, { "key": "Partners and Roles", "zone": "Backstage", "order": 5, "entryNoun": "Partner", "tagLine": "Who runs this?", "coreAsk": "Who has to show up for this PB system to keep running, and in what role?", "description": "The standing roster of who facilitates this PB system, and in what role. Not the cast of one cycle, the relationships that make it run across cycles. That means the in-cycle roles (convener, fiscal sponsor, outreach, facilitators, decision-makers, evaluators, specialists) and the cross-cycle ones that are easy to forget: the advocates who hold facilitators and conveners to account, and the champions who keep the system iterating toward its goals when no cycle is running. Each one sits somewhere on commitment, from contractual down to a handshake, and comes from some sector.", "what": "The standing roster of who makes the system run across cycles, in what role, from what sector, at what level of commitment, including the advocates and champions who hold it accountable between cycles.", "soWhat": "A missing or fragile role is usually where a breakdown begins, and the roles easiest to forget are the cross-cycle ones no single cycle depends on. Naming them shows whether the system can survive one partner walking away, which it regularly has to.", "dimensions": [ { "name": "Partner", "keyColumn": true, "multiSelect": false, "help": "Name this partner so the row means something on its own.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [] }, { "name": "Role", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": false, "help": "What function this partner plays in the system.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "Convener", "description": "Holds the system overall." }, { "name": "Fiscal sponsor", "description": "Holds the money." }, { "name": "Outreach", "description": "Reaches participants, especially priority audiences." }, { "name": "Facilitator", "description": "Runs deliberation and events." }, { "name": "Decision-maker", "description": "Formal vote or final say." }, { "name": "Evaluator", "description": "Measures outcomes, often arms-length." }, { "name": "Specialist", "description": "Pulled in for specific moments: legal review, accessibility, technical support, etc." }, { "name": "Press", "description": "Covers, documents, or amplifies the system in public-facing media." }, { "name": "Influencer", "description": "Extends reach through personal audience or social capital. Includes celebrities, community leaders with public following, etc." }, { "name": "Advocate or accountability holder", "description": "Holds the convener and facilitators to account and pushes for the system between cycles. Works when no cycle is running." }, { "name": "Champion or steward", "description": "Keeps the system iterating in a direction consistent with its goals over the long run. A cross-cycle role, not an in-cycle one." } ] }, { "name": "Sector", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": false, "help": "What kind of organization this partner is.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "Public", "description": "City, county, state, agency, public body." }, { "name": "Private sector", "description": "For-profit business, corporation." }, { "name": "Nonprofit", "description": "501c3 or equivalent charitable entity." }, { "name": "School or educational institution", "description": "K-12, higher education, district." }, { "name": "Community-based organization", "description": "Grassroots, neighborhood, mutual aid, locally rooted." }, { "name": "Consultant", "description": "An outside firm or individual brought in for expertise, like process design or platform support." }, { "name": "Philanthropic", "description": "Foundation, donor-advised fund, individual major donor active beyond just funding." }, { "name": "Academic", "description": "University, research center, scholarly institution." } ] }, { "name": "Commitment level", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": false, "help": "How locked-in the partnership is.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "Contractual", "description": "Signed agreement, paid, legally enforceable." }, { "name": "MOU", "description": "Formal but not contractual. Memorandum of understanding." }, { "name": "Handshake", "description": "Real but informal. Verbal agreement or established pattern." }, { "name": "Aspirational", "description": "Named in the system design but not yet committed by the partner." } ] } ], "questions": [ { "text": "Is one partner doing multiple roles that should probably be split?", "order": 1, "spicy": false, "rationale": "Role consolidation is normal but creates single points of failure." }, { "text": "Are any required roles missing?", "order": 2, "spicy": false, "rationale": null }, { "text": "What happens if any single partner withdraws?", "order": 3, "spicy": false, "rationale": "Surfaces redundancy and resilience questions." }, { "text": "Which roles are most fragile, and can they afford to be fragile, given the goals?", "order": 4, "spicy": true, "rationale": "Surfaces where the roster is thin and whether that thinness is survivable. A fragile outreach role might be fine; a fragile decision-maker role probably is not, depending on what the system is trying to do." } ] }, { "key": "Priority Audiences", "zone": "Frontstage", "order": 10, "entryNoun": "Audience", "tagLine": "Who gets centered?", "coreAsk": "Who is this designed to center, and how do you know you are reaching them?", "description": "The participants this PB system centers in its design, why it centers them, how it reaches them, and how it knows it is reaching them. Different from beneficiaries. Priority audiences are who the design is built for first.", "what": "Who this system is designed to center first, why it centers them, how it reaches them, and how it knows it is reaching them.", "soWhat": "An audience that is named but not actually reached is the most common self-deception in the field. The verification mechanism, and whether reach is shallow (showed up once) or deep (shaped the rules), is what separates a real priority from a stated one.", "dimensions": [ { "name": "Named audiences", "keyColumn": true, "multiSelect": false, "help": "The participants the PB system explicitly centers.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "Youth", "description": "Young people, often with a defined age range." }, { "name": "Elders", "description": "Older residents." }, { "name": "Undocumented residents", "description": "Residents without legal immigration status, often excluded from formal civic participation." }, { "name": "Unhoused or housing-insecure people", "description": "People without stable housing." }, { "name": "Language-minority communities", "description": "Communities whose primary language is not the dominant one in the geography." }, { "name": "People with disabilities", "description": "People with disabilities, who often face access barriers to participation." }, { "name": "Formerly incarcerated people", "description": "People with a history of incarceration, often disenfranchised." }, { "name": "Renters", "description": "Tenants, often underrepresented relative to homeowners in local decisions." }, { "name": "Low-income residents", "description": "People with limited financial resources." }, { "name": "Specific ethnic or racial communities", "description": "Named ethnic or racial groups the PB system centers." }, { "name": "Specific neighborhoods or geographies of need", "description": "Residents of particular high-need areas." }, { "name": "People excluded from electoral politics", "description": "People who cannot or do not participate in formal elections, for any reason." } ] }, { "name": "Reason for centering", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": false, "help": "Why this audience is named as a priority.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "Representation gap", "description": "The audience is currently underrepresented in decisions that affect them." }, { "name": "Equity", "description": "The audience is historically marginalized and owed repair." }, { "name": "Mandate", "description": "Centering the audience is required by a funder, statute, or partnership." }, { "name": "Organizational mission", "description": "The convener or partners exist to serve this audience." }, { "name": "Population proportion", "description": "The audience is a major share of the geography's population." }, { "name": "Strategic capacity", "description": "The audience has the most to teach the PB system, or the most leverage to strengthen it." } ] }, { "name": "Reach mode", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": true, "help": "How the priority audience is engaged relative to the general population.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "Targeted outreach within a universal process", "description": "Everyone can participate; the priority audience gets extra outreach attention." }, { "name": "Dedicated channels", "description": "Specific channels designed for the priority audience." }, { "name": "Exclusive eligibility", "description": "Only the priority audience can participate." }, { "name": "Centered design", "description": "The entire PB system is built around the priority audience; others can join." } ] }, { "name": "Verification", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": false, "help": "How the PB system knows whether it is actually reaching the audience.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "Demographic data on participants", "description": "Who actually participated, by demographic." }, { "name": "Demographic data on outreach", "description": "Who was reached out to, not just who showed up. Surfaces effort versus result." }, { "name": "Self-report or surveys", "description": "Participants report their own identities or experiences." }, { "name": "Partner attestation", "description": "Partners working with the audience confirm reach." }, { "name": "Comparison to baseline", "description": "Participant demographics compared to the audience's share of the geography. For example, if a neighborhood is 40 percent renters, comparing the renter share of voters against that 40 percent." }, { "name": "None", "description": "No verification mechanism. The PB system claims a priority audience but cannot confirm reach." } ] } ], "questions": [ { "text": "What happens when the priority audience's wishes conflict with the broader majority's?", "order": 1, "spicy": false, "rationale": "Surfaces what happens when centering a priority audience collides with majority preference. Tests whether the centering is real or rhetorical." }, { "text": "What's the verification mechanism, and how good is the evidence it produces?", "order": 2, "spicy": false, "rationale": "Surfaces the quality of evidence behind the reach claim. Verification mechanisms vary enormously in rigor." }, { "text": "Is the priority audience actually being reached, or just named?", "order": 3, "spicy": true, "rationale": "The core verification test. A priority audience that's named but not reached is the most common honest-read failure in PB." }, { "text": "Is the audience reached in shallow ways (showed up, voted once) or deep ways (shaped the rules, named successors)?", "order": 4, "spicy": true, "rationale": "The depth test. Distinguishes systems that nominally include a priority audience from systems that actually transform what the audience can do — shaping rules, naming successors, holding power." } ] }, { "key": "Pot of Money", "zone": "Backstage", "order": 6, "entryNoun": "Pot", "tagLine": "How much, from where?", "coreAsk": "How much, from where, with what strings?", "description": "The money this PB system has to allocate. Its size, where it comes from, what it is allowed to fund, and whether it is one pot or several.", "what": "The money this system allocates: its size, where it comes from, what it is allowed to fund, and whether it is one pot or several.", "soWhat": "The pot's design quietly decides what is possible before anyone deliberates. A pot too small for the stated goal, or restricted away from what people actually need, is a constraint dressed up as a budget line, and it is the first thing to check against Goal and Priority Audiences.", "dimensions": [ { "name": "Pot Name", "keyColumn": true, "multiSelect": false, "help": "Name this pot so the row means something on its own.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [] }, { "name": "Size", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": false, "help": "How much money the system has to allocate. Open numeric or range.", "writeInHint": "a figure or range", "options": [] }, { "name": "Source", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": false, "help": "Where the money comes from. Origin, not mechanism.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "Public (tax-funded)", "description": "Government revenue, including general fund and dedicated revenue streams." }, { "name": "Philanthropic", "description": "Foundation, donor-advised fund, individual major donor." }, { "name": "Private (corporate, business)", "description": "For-profit corporate or business contribution." }, { "name": "Pooled (multiple sources combined)", "description": "Combined contributions from sources of different types." }, { "name": "Member dues or assessments", "description": "Contributions from members of an organization or association." } ] }, { "name": "Restrictions", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": true, "help": "What the money can and cannot fund. Determines what kinds of proposals are eligible.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "Can be used for capital", "description": "The money may fund physical, durable things: construction, equipment, permanent improvements." }, { "name": "Can be used for programmatic", "description": "The money may fund services, staffing, events, and ongoing work, not just physical things." }, { "name": "Must be nonpartisan", "description": "The money cannot go to anything partisan or electoral." } ] }, { "name": "Configuration", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": false, "help": "Whether the money is structured as a single pot or divided into multiple pots. Specific multi-pot logic (parallel, nested, unlockable, tiered) lives in the rulebook.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "Single pot", "description": "One pot of money that all proposals compete for." }, { "name": "Multiple pots", "description": "Money divided into multiple pots. Specific multi-pot logic lives in the rulebook." } ] } ], "questions": [ { "text": "Do the restrictions match what people actually want to fund?", "order": 1, "spicy": false, "rationale": "Surfaces mismatch between funding mechanism and community need." }, { "text": "Is this money committed for one cycle, or is there a plan to sustain it?", "order": 2, "spicy": false, "rationale": "Surfaces a tension the two existing questions miss: a pot can be the right size and well-targeted this cycle and still vanish next cycle. Sustainability of the money is its own risk." }, { "text": "Is the pot proportional to what the system claims to do?", "order": 3, "spicy": true, "rationale": "Surfaces gaps between stated ambition and material capacity." } ] }, { "key": "Authority and Mandate", "zone": "Backstage", "order": 7, "entryNoun": "Authority", "tagLine": "Who said yes, and how binding?", "coreAsk": "Who said this can exist? Do they have to honor what it produces?", "description": "The institutional permission for this PB system to exist, and how much the institution has to honor what the system produces. It comes from some source, at some level of formality, with some degree of bindingness, over some scope, and is either released or still pending.", "what": "The institutional permission for this system to exist, and how bound the institution is to honor what it produces: from what source, at what formality, how binding, over what scope, released or still pending.", "soWhat": "This is where a soft mandate hides as a firm one. A system can run for years on a pinky-promise that looks binding on paper, and the gap only shows the moment the institution dislikes a result, so making the softness legible here is the point.", "dimensions": [ { "name": "Source of authority", "keyColumn": true, "multiSelect": false, "help": "Who or what authorized this PB system to exist.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "Legislative", "description": "Authorized through legislation, statute, or voter-approved ballot measure passed by a legislative body." }, { "name": "Executive", "description": "Authorized by an executive figure: mayor, governor, agency head, superintendent, executive director." }, { "name": "Council or board", "description": "Authorized by a governance body: city council, school board, board of directors, governing council." }, { "name": "Institutional", "description": "Authorized by an organization through its own internal policy or commitment, not via external authority." }, { "name": "Voluntary partnership / MOU", "description": "Authorized by mutual agreement between partnering organizations, with no external authority backing it." } ] }, { "name": "Formality", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": false, "help": "How formally the authority is committed. A codified mandate is harder to revoke than a pinky promise, even when the source is the same.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "Codified", "description": "Written into hard law that outlives whoever is in office: a charter, an ordinance, legislation, a ballot measure. The hardest to undo." }, { "name": "Formal", "description": "A documented commitment that is not law: a signed agreement, an MOU, a board resolution. Real and on paper, but easier to reverse than codified authority." }, { "name": "Informal", "description": "A pinky promise. Verbal commitment, public announcement, or established pattern with no documented instrument. The most common form of authority for PB systems." } ] }, { "name": "Bindingness", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": false, "help": "How much the institution is required to honor what the PB system produces.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "Binding", "description": "The institution is required to honor results." }, { "name": "Advisory with required response", "description": "The institution is not required to honor results, but must publicly respond, debate, or formally consider them." }, { "name": "Advisory", "description": "Results are recommendations only. No required response." }, { "name": "Non-binding", "description": "No formal commitment to even consider results." } ] }, { "name": "Scope", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": false, "help": "What the authority permits the community to decide. People often default to assuming full discretion when the actual scope is narrower.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "Full discretion within the pot", "description": "Community can decide freely on what gets funded, subject only to the pot's restrictions." }, { "name": "Themed", "description": "Community decides within a pre-set theme or category." }, { "name": "Pre-approved menu", "description": "Community picks from a list the institution has vetted in advance." }, { "name": "Mixed", "description": "Different pots or phases have different scopes." } ] }, { "name": "Status", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": false, "help": "Whether the authority has actually been released or is still pending. Captures gates like council ratification of large expenditures.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "Committed and released", "description": "Authority is in place and resources are flowing." }, { "name": "Committed but not released", "description": "Authority granted but the pot is not yet activated. Pending council ratification, board sign-off, fundraising target, or other step." }, { "name": "Aspirational", "description": "The PB system is being designed in advance of the authority being granted." }, { "name": "Contingent", "description": "Authority depends on conditions being met (e.g., pilot success, partner commitments, demonstration of community demand)." } ] } ], "questions": [ { "text": "Who can revoke or override the mandate, and under what conditions?", "order": 1, "spicy": false, "rationale": "Surfaces fragility. A mandate that one person can revoke is structurally different from one that requires a vote, a charter amendment, or a referendum to undo." }, { "text": "What is the authority's expiration or sunset?", "order": 2, "spicy": false, "rationale": "Distinguishes durable PB systems from per-cycle reauthorization patterns." }, { "text": "What approval steps stand between the system's output and the resources flowing?", "order": 3, "spicy": false, "rationale": "Captures patterns like Seattle's council ratification of large expenditures — the system is binding in principle but has procedural gates between output and resources flowing." }, { "text": "If the institution disagrees with what the system produces, what happens?", "order": 4, "spicy": false, "rationale": "Surfaces bindingness in concrete form. Hypothetical disagreement is the test of how binding the authority actually is." }, { "text": "Is the system already operating ahead of the authority being formally released?", "order": 5, "spicy": true, "rationale": "Surfaces a common pattern: PB systems get designed and partners get recruited before the formal authority lands. If it doesn't land, the system either embarrasses itself or pivots in ways that betray the partnerships built." } ] }, { "key": "Activities", "zone": "Engine", "order": 3, "entryNoun": "Activity", "tagLine": "What does this actually do?", "coreAsk": "What happens before, during, between, and/or after cycles?", "description": "Everything that happens in and around the PB system. Not just the steps of a cycle (outreach, idea collection, deliberation, voting, oversight) but the work that keeps the apparatus alive between and around cycles: advocating for next year's money, teaching people what PB is, cultivating partners, defending the mandate, and building the durable infrastructure the whole thing runs on.", "what": "Everything the system does in and around cycles: not only the cycle steps (outreach, ideas, deliberation, voting) but the between-cycle work of advocacy, education, partner care, and defending the mandate.", "soWhat": "This is where a stated goal either gets resourced or quietly does not. The work nobody owns is where systems rot, so naming the activities, and who they belong to, exposes what is actually anyone's job and what the system is only hoping happens.", "dimensions": [ { "name": "Activity", "keyColumn": true, "multiSelect": false, "help": "What happens in the system. Includes the activities that run a cycle and the activities that keep the system alive outside of cycles.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "Outreach", "description": "Letting people know the PB system exists and inviting them in. Process work." }, { "name": "Idea collection", "description": "Gathering needs and proposals from the community. Process work." }, { "name": "Proposal development", "description": "Turning raw ideas into vettable, votable proposals. Process work." }, { "name": "Deliberation", "description": "Discussing, weighing, and refining proposals. Process work." }, { "name": "Voting or deciding", "description": "Making the decision, however it gets made. Process work." }, { "name": "Implementation oversight", "description": "Seeing funded projects through and keeping watch on delivery. Process work." }, { "name": "Cycle debrief", "description": "Reflecting on how the cycle went. Process work that feeds the iteration mechanism." }, { "name": "Advocacy and resource development", "description": "Fighting for next year's money and political backing. System work that runs between and around cycles." }, { "name": "Civic education about PB", "description": "Teaching people what PB is and how it works, beyond any single cycle's outreach. System work." }, { "name": "Partner cultivation", "description": "Keeping the standing roster of partners warm and bringing new ones in. System work." }, { "name": "Mandate defense", "description": "Protecting the authority the system runs on when it is questioned or at risk. System work." }, { "name": "Participant onboarding", "description": "Continuously bringing new people into the system and its tools, like onboarding residents to the platform. System work, not tied to one cycle." }, { "name": "Platform deployment", "description": "Standing up the digital platform the system runs on, like deploying Decidim. Infrastructure work, usually one-time." }, { "name": "Data and evaluation infrastructure", "description": "Building the pipelines and tooling that let the system measure itself. Infrastructure work." }, { "name": "Rulebook authoring", "description": "Writing the rules the cycle runs on. Infrastructure work the first time, refreshed when the iteration mechanism changes the rules." }, { "name": "Fiscal and legal setup", "description": "Setting up fiscal sponsorship, agreements, and the legal scaffolding. Infrastructure work, mostly one-time." }, { "name": "Sortition", "description": "Selecting a random, representative sample of a population." }, { "name": "Deliberative Townhall", "description": "A single focus townhall where audience members are selected by sortition." } ] }, { "name": "Type", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": false, "help": "What kind of work the activity is. Process work runs a cycle. System work keeps the apparatus alive between cycles. Infrastructure work builds the durable capacity the whole thing runs on. The same tool can show up as all three: deploying a platform is infrastructure, onboarding people to it is system, collecting ideas on it is process.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "Process", "description": "Work that runs a cycle." }, { "name": "System", "description": "Work that keeps the apparatus alive between and around cycles." }, { "name": "Infrastructure", "description": "Work that builds durable capacity the whole system runs on. Sometimes one-time, sometimes refreshed." } ] }, { "name": "Cadence", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": false, "help": "How often the activity happens. Cadence and type are different axes: infrastructure can be one-time or refreshed, system work is usually continuous, process work runs per cycle.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "Per cycle", "description": "Happens once each cycle." }, { "name": "Continuous", "description": "Runs all the time, not tied to the cycle calendar." }, { "name": "Episodic", "description": "Happens when something triggers it, not on a fixed schedule." }, { "name": "One-time", "description": "Done once to stand the system up, then rarely or never repeated." } ] }, { "name": "Owner", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": false, "help": "Which partner or role carries the activity. Links back to Partners and Roles. Surfaces the activities nobody actually owns.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "Convener", "description": "The institution that holds the system." }, { "name": "Partner org", "description": "One or more partner organizations." }, { "name": "Facilitator", "description": "Whoever runs the rooms and the process." }, { "name": "Volunteers", "description": "Community members contributing unpaid labor." }, { "name": "Specialist", "description": "A contractor or technical partner pulled in for a specific activity." }, { "name": "Shared", "description": "Carried jointly by more than one actor." }, { "name": "Unassigned", "description": "Nobody actually owns it. Diagnostic on its own." } ] } ], "questions": [ { "text": "Who does the system work, advocacy, education, partner care, and is it actually anyone's job?", "order": 1, "spicy": false, "rationale": "Surfaces the unowned system work. Advocacy, civic education, and partner care rarely sit in anyone's job description, so they get done off the side of a desk or not at all." }, { "text": "What got built once and is now quietly decaying because nobody owns keeping it up?", "order": 2, "spicy": false, "rationale": "Tests whether the system can tell the difference between building capacity once and sustaining it. A system that treats infrastructure as a one-time line and never refreshes it tends to run on decaying tools." }, { "text": "Which activities does the system actually resource, and which does it just hope happen?", "order": 3, "spicy": true, "rationale": "The core resourcing test. Many PB systems list activities they hope happen but only fund a few. Surfaces the gap between the activity list and the budget." }, { "text": "In which activities is real decision-making power shared with the community, and in which does the system keep it?", "order": 4, "spicy": true, "rationale": "Replaces the old decision-mechanism dimension. The mechanism only ever mattered as the place where power is exercised, so this asks the question directly: across all the activities, where does the community actually hold decision-making power, and where does the system keep it? A spicy question because the honest answer is often narrower than the stated one." } ] }, { "key": "Feedback Loops", "zone": "Engine", "order": 4, "entryNoun": "Evaluation", "tagLine": "How does this learn?", "coreAsk": "What evaluations run, what each measures, and how are learnings implemented?", "description": "How this PB system improves itself. The feedback loop that lets each cycle differ from the previous one in informed ways. Each row is an evaluation the system runs (an end-of-event survey, a cycle review, a longitudinal study), and each evaluation can measure more than one thing. Who runs it, how often, what it measures, what its findings are allowed to change, and whether those changes actually come back as new rules. A system with no working feedback loops tends to get stale or fail to adapt to changing sociopolitical contexts.", "what": "The evaluations this system runs and how their findings become new rules. Each row is one evaluation, and a single evaluation can measure several things at once.", "soWhat": "A system with no working feedback loop gets stale and stops adapting to a changing context. The sharp question is not whether evaluation happens but whether anyone has the authority to turn a finding into a changed rule, which is why this node pairs so tightly with Authority.", "dimensions": [ { "name": "Evaluation", "keyColumn": true, "multiSelect": false, "help": "Name this evaluation so the row means something on its own.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [] }, { "name": "Evaluator", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": false, "help": "Who evaluates the PB system's performance.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "Internal team", "description": "The convener does its own evaluation. Cheap and fast, but vulnerable to motivated reasoning. Includes evaluators that are contracted by the convener." }, { "name": "Partner-led", "description": "One or more partner organizations conduct evaluation." }, { "name": "Arms-length partner", "description": "A formally separated evaluation function that contracts independently of the convener. Cascais's Associação In Loco is an example." }, { "name": "Fully external academic body", "description": "A university or research center with no operational stake in the PB system. Ostbelgien's UCLouvain is an example." }, { "name": "Participants themselves", "description": "Community-led evaluation by people who participated in the PB system." }, { "name": "None", "description": "No formal evaluator. This is itself diagnostic — a PB system without an evaluator tends to either ossify or drift." } ] }, { "name": "Timing", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": false, "help": "How often evaluation happens.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "Every cycle", "description": "Evaluation built into the rhythm of the PB system, conducted at the end of each cycle." }, { "name": "Multi-cycle", "description": "Evaluation conducted every few cycles." }, { "name": "Ad hoc", "description": "Evaluation only when something specific prompts it." }, { "name": "One-time", "description": "Pilot evaluation only, then never repeated." }, { "name": "Never", "description": "No evaluation has ever been conducted." } ] }, { "name": "Authority to change rules", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": false, "help": "What evaluation findings are formally allowed to do. Closely related to Authority and Mandate's Bindingness, but applied to the iteration loop rather than the PB system's primary outputs.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "Binding", "description": "Findings produce required rule changes." }, { "name": "Advisory with required response", "description": "Findings must be responded to or formally considered, even if not adopted." }, { "name": "Advisory", "description": "Findings can be ignored without consequence." }, { "name": "Informational only", "description": "Findings have no rule-change authority at all - they exist to document, not to change." } ] }, { "name": "What it measures", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": true, "help": "The one or more things this evaluation looks at. A single evaluation, like an end-of-event survey, often measures several at once: turnout, who showed up, satisfaction. Multi-select, because the instrument and the target are different things now: the row is the evaluation, this is what it covers.", "writeInHint": "one or more things this evaluation looks at", "options": [ { "name": "Reach and participation", "description": null }, { "name": "Money and distribution", "description": null }, { "name": "Process quality", "description": null }, { "name": "Projects and delivery", "description": null }, { "name": "Downstream and institutional effects", "description": null } ] } ], "questions": [ { "text": "What happens if evaluation surfaces a finding the convener doesn't want to act on?", "order": 1, "spicy": false, "rationale": "The stress test for the iteration mechanism. A PB system that can only act on findings it likes doesn't really have an iteration mechanism — it has a confirmation mechanism." }, { "text": "Who is empowered to change the rules between cycles, and on what basis?", "order": 2, "spicy": false, "rationale": "Surfaces where iteration authority actually sits. Sometimes the convener, sometimes an evaluator, sometimes a community body, sometimes nobody clearly. Often differs from who's named on paper." }, { "text": "Can you point to a rule or design choice that exists because of a prior evaluation?", "order": 3, "spicy": true, "rationale": "The evidence test for whether the iteration mechanism actually works. If no specific rule traces to a prior evaluation, the loop is open in practice regardless of how it looks on paper." } ] }, { "key": "Geographies", "zone": "Frontstage", "order": 8, "entryNoun": "Geography", "tagLine": "Where does this reach?", "coreAsk": "At what scale, with what boundaries, unified or federated?", "description": "The scale and structure where this PB system operates, and where decisions land.", "what": "The scale and boundaries where this system operates and where decisions land: one unified area or several federated ones.", "soWhat": "Boundaries are more often inherited than chosen, and the wrong ones quietly defeat the goal by drawing the wrong people in or out. Whether projects can cross a boundary, and whose map counts (administrators' or residents'), decides who the process actually serves.", "dimensions": [ { "name": "Geography", "keyColumn": true, "multiSelect": false, "help": "Name this geography so the row means something on its own.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [] }, { "name": "Scale", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": false, "help": "The size of the geography being operated on.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "Block or hyperlocal", "description": "A single street, building, or development." }, { "name": "Neighborhood", "description": "A recognized neighborhood or community area." }, { "name": "District", "description": "Council district, electoral district, school district, ward." }, { "name": "Municipal or citywide", "description": "The whole city, town, or municipality." }, { "name": "Regional", "description": "Multiple municipalities, a county, or a metro area." }, { "name": "State or provincial", "description": "A state, province, or equivalent." }, { "name": "Multi-jurisdictional", "description": "Crosses formal jurisdictional boundaries." } ] }, { "name": "Boundary logic", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": false, "help": "How the boundaries are drawn.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "Administrative", "description": "Uses existing official boundaries: council district, zip code, school zone." }, { "name": "Community-defined", "description": "Residents draw their own boundaries." }, { "name": "Organic", "description": "Boundaries emerge from where partners already work and existing networks." }, { "name": "Need-based", "description": "Drawn using a vulnerability index, opportunity index, or other measure of need." }, { "name": "Hybrid", "description": "Boundaries drawn by mixing logics, for example administrative lines adjusted by need." } ] }, { "name": "Configuration", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": false, "help": "How multiple geographies relate to each other when more than one is present. Captures strata like NYC's neighborhood / borough / citywide ballots.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "Single", "description": "One geography, no others." }, { "name": "Parallel", "description": "Multiple geographies running simultaneously, each typically with its own pot." }, { "name": "Nested", "description": "Smaller geographies inside a larger one, like a per-school youth process inside a municipal process." }, { "name": "Federated", "description": "Independent geographies that share some structure but run separately, like council-district processes that each set their own rules." }, { "name": "Stratified", "description": "Multiple tiers of geography with ballots at each level, like neighborhood plus borough plus citywide." } ] }, { "name": "Equity weighting", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": false, "help": "Whether geographies are treated equally or rebalanced intentionally.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "Equal", "description": "Every geography gets the same pot or treatment." }, { "name": "Weighted by need", "description": "Geographies with higher need get more." }, { "name": "Floor-plus-need", "description": "Every geography gets a floor amount, then more is added by need." } ] } ], "questions": [ { "text": "Can projects cross boundaries, or must they stay within their geography?", "order": 1, "spicy": false, "rationale": "Surfaces a real design choice that affects what kinds of projects are possible. Cross-boundary projects need different governance than within-boundary ones." }, { "text": "Whose perception of the geography matters: administrators, residents, or both?", "order": 2, "spicy": false, "rationale": "Surfaces whose mental map the geography reflects. Administrators and residents often draw different boundaries for the same area." }, { "text": "Do the boundaries make sense for the goal, and are they intentional or just inherited?", "order": 3, "spicy": true, "rationale": "Surfaces whether the geography was chosen or defaulted into. Administrative boundaries are often inherited without asking whether they fit what the system is trying to do." } ] }, { "key": "Engagement Channels", "zone": "Frontstage", "order": 9, "entryNoun": "Channel", "tagLine": "How do people show up and decide?", "coreAsk": "How do people engage with the system, and through what kind of contact?", "description": "The media people use to engage with the PB system, and the kind of contact those channels create. Borrowing from the Business Model Canvas, channels range from mass and broadcast down to one-on-one. This box is only about how people reach and are reached by the system. What gets decided, and how, lives in Activities.", "what": "The media through which people reach and are reached by this system, and the kind of contact each channel creates, from mass and broadcast down to one-on-one.", "soWhat": "Channels decide who can take part easily and who has to work harder to be heard. A channel set that misses the audiences the system says it centers is where equity goals fail in practice rather than on paper, which is why this node is tested against Priority Audiences.", "dimensions": [ { "name": "Channel", "keyColumn": true, "multiSelect": false, "help": "Name this channel so the row means something on its own.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [] }, { "name": "Participation modes", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": false, "help": "The channels through which people engage with the PB system.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "In-person events", "description": "Meetings, assemblies, tabling, workshops." }, { "name": "Digital platform", "description": "A dedicated participation platform such as Decidim, CONSUL, or a custom build." }, { "name": "Paper", "description": "Printed ballots, paper proposals, mail-in." }, { "name": "Phone or text", "description": "Voice calls, SMS, or text-based participation." }, { "name": "Door-to-door", "description": "Canvassing, neighbor-to-neighbor outreach." }, { "name": "Social media", "description": "Engagement through social platforms." }, { "name": "Embedded in existing spaces", "description": "Schools, libraries, faith communities, workplaces, community orgs where people already gather." } ] }, { "name": "Relationship type", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": false, "help": "The kind of contact a channel creates, borrowed from the Business Model Canvas. The same message reaches people very differently as a mass broadcast versus a one-on-one conversation.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "Mass or broadcast", "description": "One message to many: flyers, press, social media, citywide mailers." }, { "name": "In-person group", "description": "Gathered contact: assemblies, workshops, meetings." }, { "name": "One-on-one", "description": "Direct personal contact: canvassing, relational organizing, a conversation at a door." }, { "name": "Self-service", "description": "People engage on their own through tools the system provides, like a platform or a paper ballot drop." }, { "name": "Automated", "description": "System-driven contact with no person on the other end: text reminders, automated confirmations." }, { "name": "Embedded in a trusted intermediary", "description": "Contact carried through an org or person the community already trusts, like a school, a faith leader, or a community group." } ] }, { "name": "Synchronicity", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": false, "help": "When participation happens relative to other participation.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "Synchronous", "description": "Events happen at specific times; participants engage together." }, { "name": "Asynchronous", "description": "Participation happens on the participant's own time." }, { "name": "Mixed", "description": "A combination of synchronous and asynchronous participation." } ] } ], "questions": [ { "text": "Who's likely to participate easily through these channels, and who has to work harder?", "order": 1, "spicy": false, "rationale": "Surfaces who the channels favor by default and who has to work harder. The flip side of the cost question." }, { "text": "What does it take to participate: time, language, technology, transportation, childcare, trust?", "order": 2, "spicy": false, "rationale": "Surfaces the real cost of participation across the dimensions that exclude people: time, language, technology, transportation, childcare, trust." }, { "text": "Do the channels actually reach the audiences the system says it centers?", "order": 3, "spicy": true, "rationale": "The channels-match-audiences test. A digital-only system that names elders or undocumented residents as priority audiences has a mismatch. Surfaces whether the way people are reached fits who the system says it centers." } ] }, { "key": "Costs", "zone": "Accounting", "order": 11, "entryNoun": "Cost", "tagLine": "What does this consume?", "coreAsk": "What does this actually cost to run, and who pays, in what currency?", "description": "What running this PB system actually consumes, beyond the budget line. Money, staff time, volunteer and community time, political capital, what else that money and time could have gone to, and what people have to let go of for participation to work. Read across six levels, from the individual up to the societal, tagging the ones that apply.", "what": "What running this system actually consumes beyond the budget line: staff and volunteer time, political capital, opportunity cost, and what people must give up for participation to work, read across levels from the individual to the societal.", "soWhat": "The true cost is mostly unpaid and unevenly borne. When the heaviest cost lands on the people who can least afford it, a process built for equity can quietly produce the opposite, so reading cost past the dollar figure is where that shows.", "dimensions": [ { "name": "Cost", "keyColumn": true, "multiSelect": false, "help": "Name this cost so the row means something on its own.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [] }, { "name": "Cost type", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": false, "help": "What kind of resource the PB system consumes to run.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "Direct money", "description": "Platform, materials, food, stipends, translation, printing, venue." }, { "name": "Staff time", "description": "Institution and partner hours spent running the PB system." }, { "name": "Volunteer and community time", "description": "Contributed hours, worth tracking even when unpaid. Often the largest hidden cost." }, { "name": "Political capital", "description": "Relationships and expectations the convener spends to keep the PB system running." }, { "name": "Opportunity cost", "description": "What else the money, time, or attention could have funded instead. Use when there is an explicit redirection of existing funds." }, { "name": "Mental model surrendered", "description": null } ] }, { "name": "Level of analysis", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": true, "help": "Where a cost registers. Six levels, from the individual up to the societal. These work as tags: mark the ones that apply, you do not have to fill every level.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "Individual", "description": "Registers in a single person: their skills, sense of agency, time, or burden." }, { "name": "Interpersonal", "description": "Registers in the relationships between people: trust between neighbors, or between residents and officials." }, { "name": "Organizational", "description": "Drain on the convener or partner orgs: staff capacity, budget, attention." }, { "name": "Community", "description": "Registers in a bounded community: a neighborhood, a constituency, or a place-based or identity group." }, { "name": "Cultural", "description": "Registers in shared norms and expectations: what people take to be normal about how decisions get made." }, { "name": "Societal", "description": "Registers in large-scale institutions and structures: policy, law, how government works." } ] }, { "name": "Recurrence", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": false, "help": "Whether the cost is paid once or comes back every cycle. Pairs with the Activities cadence: one-time infrastructure costs line up with one-time activities, recurring costs with continuous and per-cycle work.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "One-time", "description": "Paid once to stand the system up: platform build, initial training, launch." }, { "name": "Recurring", "description": "Comes back every cycle: facilitation, outreach, vote administration." } ] } ], "questions": [ { "text": "Who bears the heaviest cost, and is it the people who can least afford it?", "order": 1, "spicy": false, "rationale": "The equity test for costs. A PB system can redistribute power while extracting the heaviest cost from the people it claims to serve." }, { "text": "What is the convener spending in political capital, and what happens when that runs out?", "order": 2, "spicy": false, "rationale": "Surfaces the political sustainability question. Political capital is finite, and a PB system running on a convener's goodwill is fragile when that goodwill runs out." }, { "text": "What's the true cost including unpaid and volunteer labor, not just the budget line?", "order": 3, "spicy": true, "rationale": "Surfaces the hidden cost. Budget lines capture direct money but miss the volunteer and community labor that often carries the PB system." } ] }, { "key": "Effects", "zone": "Accounting", "order": 12, "entryNoun": "Effect", "tagLine": "What changes because of this?", "coreAsk": "What changed because this ran, and at what level?", "description": "What this PB system produces, read across six levels from the individual up to the societal. Most PB measurement stops at the individual level, counting how many people showed up. The levels above it are where the harder questions live. Effects include the negative and the unintended, and the new ways of thinking that emerge, not only the wins.", "what": "What this system produces, read across six levels from the individual up to the societal, including the negative, the unintended, and the new ways of thinking that emerge, not only the wins.", "soWhat": "Most measurement stops at counting who showed up, and the levels above the individual are where the real questions live. A system that measures only what is easy to count will miss exactly what it was built to change, which is the gap this node is designed to expose.", "dimensions": [ { "name": "Effect", "keyColumn": true, "multiSelect": false, "help": "Name this effect so the row means something on its own.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [] }, { "name": "Effect type", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": false, "help": "The kind of effect this is, parallel to Cost type. One effect type is a mental model emerging; the others cover material, capacity, relational, behavioral, institutional, and cultural change.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "Material or project outcome", "description": null }, { "name": "Capacity built", "description": null }, { "name": "Relationships and trust", "description": null }, { "name": "Behavior or practice change", "description": null }, { "name": "Mental model emerged", "description": null }, { "name": "Institutional or policy change", "description": null }, { "name": "Narrative or cultural shift", "description": null } ] }, { "name": "Effect direction", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": false, "help": "Whether the effect strengthens, weakens, or was unintended.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "Positive", "description": "The PB system produced the change it aimed for." }, { "name": "Negative", "description": "The system produced harm or erosion: trust lost, relationships strained, expectations betrayed." }, { "name": "Mixed or unintended", "description": "Effects the system didn't aim for, good or bad." } ] }, { "name": "Level of analysis", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": true, "help": "Where an effect registers. Six levels, from the individual up to the societal. These work as tags: mark the ones that apply, you do not have to fill every level. The point is to look past individual reach to the levels PB measurement usually skips.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "Individual", "description": "Registers in a single person: their skills, sense of agency, time, or burden." }, { "name": "Interpersonal", "description": "Registers in the relationships between people: trust between neighbors, or between residents and officials." }, { "name": "Organizational", "description": "Capacity built in the convener and partner orgs: new skills, infrastructure, data, practices." }, { "name": "Community", "description": "Registers in a bounded community: a neighborhood, a constituency, or a place-based or identity group." }, { "name": "Cultural", "description": "Registers in shared norms and expectations: what people take to be normal about how decisions get made." }, { "name": "Societal", "description": "Registers in large-scale institutions and structures: policy, law, how government works." } ] }, { "name": "Measurement quality", "keyColumn": false, "multiSelect": false, "help": "How well the effect is actually known. The stated-versus-verified distinction applied to outcomes.", "writeInHint": null, "options": [ { "name": "Verified", "description": "Solid evidence the effect occurred." }, { "name": "Claimed", "description": "Asserted but not well-evidenced." }, { "name": "Unmeasured", "description": "Plausibly occurring but not tracked." }, { "name": "Testified", "description": "Unprovoked reporting by actors within the system." } ] } ], "questions": [ { "text": "What changed because this ran, at each of the six levels?", "order": 1, "spicy": false, "rationale": "The core unit-of-analysis prompt. Forces a read at all five levels rather than collapsing to individual reach." }, { "text": "What negative or unintended effects is the system producing, and is anyone tracking them?", "order": 2, "spicy": false, "rationale": "Surfaces harm. Most PB measurement only looks for positive effects. Negative and unintended effects often go untracked precisely because no one is looking." }, { "text": "If you only had individual-level numbers, what would you miss?", "order": 3, "spicy": false, "rationale": "Dramatizes the unit-of-analysis problem. Makes vivid everything the individual-level numbers leave out." }, { "text": "Is the system measuring what matters, or just what's easy to count?", "order": 4, "spicy": true, "rationale": "The measurement-honesty test. Individual reach is the easiest thing to count and the least telling. Surfaces whether the system measures what matters." } ] } ] }