The Answerable State · Power that keeps its word

THE PROBLEM

Why power drifts

Most government runs open-loop

A thermostat that checked the temperature once every four years would be useless, however good its intentions. Much of government works that way. Promises are made in words that cannot be checked. Money is spent before anyone says how success will be measured. Results arrive late, if they are measured at all. The main consequence, an election, bundles hundreds of decisions into one vote every few years. The people responsible have often moved on by then. Officials learn that hiding failure is safer than admitting it, so the information that would let everyone improve stays buried.

Promises that can’t be checked
“Tackle”, “invest in” and “prioritise” commit to nothing that can be measured. A vague promise can never be broken, and so it can never be kept.
Feedback that arrives too late
Evaluation comes years after the decision, in a report few people read. The decision it should have corrected has already been repeated.
Consequences that are bundled and blunt
One vote has to judge everything at once. It cannot tell a good transport policy from a bad housing one, or an honest failure from a cover-up.
Incentives that reward hiding
Admitting a miss is punished more surely than concealing it. So misses are concealed, and nobody learns from them.

of the 16,000+ projects in Bent Flyvbjerg’s database were delivered on budget and on time. Only 0.5% also delivered the benefits that were promised.: 8.5%; Flyvbjerg & Gardner, How Big Things Get Done (2023)
Across 30 OECD countries, 39% of people reported high or moderately high trust in their national government, and 44% low or no trust. Distrust now outnumbers trust.: 39% vs 44%; OECD Trust Survey, 2024 results (fieldwork late 2023)
pledges from 57 campaigns in 12 countries were studied. Parties that held executive office fulfilled a clear majority at least in part, and some single-party governments fulfilled well over 80%. A record of promises exists. Most people just never see it in one place.: 20,000+; Thomson et al., American Journal of Political Science (2017)
of the 180 countries on the Corruption Perceptions Index 2024 scored below 50 out of 100. The global average, 43, has not moved for years.: Over ⅔; Transparency International, CPI 2024

My reading. My reading of these numbers is a hypothesis, not a finding. What fails most often is not intelligence or goodwill. It is the loop: promise, measure, consequence, correction. Close the loop at the level of each decision, and the many smaller things the IEGF hoped to fix become easier to fix.

DESIGN TARGETS

What it optimises for

Eight properties, each with the failure it answers, the mechanism that delivers it, and how anyone could tell whether it is working. Each mechanism builds on something already in use somewhere.

01

Transparency

See power while it is being used.

Fails today because
Records arrive late, scattered and unreadable. Keeping a secret needs no reason.

Mechanism
One public Ledger records every exercise of public power within 48 hours, in a single machine-readable format. Any secret needs a reason, an owner and an expiry date, and the number of sealed items is published.

How we would know
Median hours from decision to record. Number of sealed items held past their expiry date (target: zero).

Builds onCertificate Transparency Open Contracting Data Standard ProZorro
02

Actionability

Every promise can be checked.

Fails today because
Vague verbs. No owner, no date, no measure, no budget line.

Mechanism
The Commitment Contract. No public money is spent without an owner, a measure, a deadline, a forecast and an expiry date. Values that resist numbers are judged by people, but they are still judged.

How we would know
Share of spending covered by complete contracts.

Builds onThomson et al.TheyWorkForYou
03

Accountability

Someone’s name is on it.

Fails today because
Responsibility spreads until nobody holds it, and the consequence waits for an election years later.

Mechanism
Every commitment has two named owners: a political owner who chose it and a delivery owner who runs it. Every office has a public delivery record.

How we would know
Share of commitments with named owners. Share of missed commitments that were explained on time.

Builds onRecall of MPs Act 2015 Parliamentary Standards Act 2009
04

Swift consequences

Consequences arrive while they still matter.

Fails today because
Years pass between a failure and any consequence. By then the public has forgotten and the official has moved on.

Mechanism
A ladder of consequences, each step on a published clock: a public flag the next day, an explanation within 14 days, a review within 30, a decision within 60. Integrity cases get a first verdict within 90 days.

How we would know
Median days from a missed measure to a published explanation. Median days from referral to verdict.

Builds onUS Speedy Trial Act of 1974 EU Regulation 261/2004 on air passenger rights EU Services Directive 2006/123/EC
05

Honesty over image

Hiding costs more than failing.

Fails today because
Officials hide failure because admitting it is punished and concealment usually is not.

Mechanism
The honest-failure rule. A disclosed miss never brings personal sanction. Concealment, falsification, gaming a measure and corruption bring heavy, fast sanction.

How we would know
Share of misses reported by the owner before the measure was due.

Builds onNASA Aviation Safety Reporting System
06

Learning

Every decision is a chance to learn.

Fails today because
Predictions are forgotten, policies are rarely evaluated, and rules never expire.

Mechanism
Forecasts are made before decisions and scored after them. Losing alternatives are recorded with their own forecasts. Uncertain policies roll out in stages. Every rule expires unless it is renewed with evidence.

How we would know
Calibration of public forecasts over time. Share of rules reviewed before they expire.

Builds onMellers et al.Texas Sunset Advisory Commission Office for Budget Responsibility
07

Legitimacy

Everyone can see, ask and challenge.

Fails today because
Capture by the organised few, and consultation that changes nothing.

Mechanism
Equal votes are kept. A standing Citizens’ Jury, chosen by lottery, can summon anyone in power. Petitions get a binding answer on a clock. Public comment is ranked by agreement across divides, not by volume.

How we would know
Share of summonses answered on time. Petition response times. Trust compared with similar places that have not adopted the framework.

Builds onPermanent Citizens’ Dialogue The Citizens’ Assembly Wojcik et al.vTaiwan
08

The long term

The future gets a voice and a ledger.

Fails today because
Costs are pushed past the next election, and long-term commitments are dropped quietly.

Mechanism
A Future Office can pause any hard-to-reverse decision once, for 60 days, and require a public answer. A Long Ledger holds commitments longer than ten years. Changing course is always allowed, but never in silence.

How we would know
Share of hard-to-reverse decisions that carry a statement on their effects for future generations.

Builds onWell-being of Future Generations

THE CORE

The Answer Loop

Every exercise of public power runs the same seven-step loop. Follow one fictional commitment through it: faster ambulances in Harrowdale.

Harrowdale is a fictional region. Its numbers are invented to show how the rules interact. They are not forecasts or measurements of any real service.

A need gets a hearing, and an answer.
Anyone can start the loop: the elected government’s programme, a petition that reaches 1% of residents, an agenda item from the Citizens’ Jury, or an alert from the Evidence Office or Future Office. Every ask gets an answer on a clock, either a draft commitment or a reasoned refusal on the record. Silence is not an available answer.
Harrowdale After two deaths during long ambulance waits, 2% of Harrowdale residents sign a petition. The Evidence Office confirms that response times rose 40% in five years. The government has 60 days to answer.
Write it so it can be checked.
The proposer drafts a Commitment Contract and publishes it before any vote: two named owners, an outcome measure and guard measures, a target and date, a budget in tranches, forecasts, the consequence if it is missed, and an expiry date. The Evidence Office adds an independent forecast and may add guard measures.
Harrowdale The Ministry drafts the contract shown below. The Evidence Office notices that response times can be “improved” by reclassifying calls, and adds a guard measure on the share of calls classed Category 1.
Decide on a clock that fits what is at stake.
The body with lawful authority decides within the time set by the decision’s class. Reversible choices move fast; irreversible ones move carefully. Votes carry one-line reasons. Losing alternatives are recorded with their own forecasts, so it will later be clear who was right.
Harrowdale This is a reversible but significant decision (Class B), so the clock is 60 days. The regional council approves it on day 41, by 31 votes to 19. The minority’s alternative, community first-responders in rural areas, is recorded with its own forecast.
Work in the open.
Spending, hiring, contracts and meetings with outside interests appear on the Ledger within 48 hours. The AI Clerk cross-checks entries and raises flags. A named human reviews every flag within three working days, and both the flag and its outcome are public.
Harrowdale Forty crews are hired and the second tranche is released. The AI Clerk flags that a vehicle supplier’s director donated to the Minister’s party. A Ledger officer finds the donation was properly declared and the tender properly run. The flag is closed in public within two days.
Someone else holds the ruler.
The owner never marks their own work. The Evidence Office measures from raw data and publishes monthly. When a guard measure moves, the headline number is treated as suspect until it has been checked.
Harrowdale At month 14 the median is 9:10: better, but off track. In one quarter the share of calls classed Category 1 falls by 6 points. The guard measure trips and an inquiry opens automatically.
Results trigger consequences on a timetable.
Each outcome starts its rung of the consequence ladder automatically. A kept commitment earns autonomy. An honest miss brings an explanation and a fix, not a sanction. Failing to answer freezes money and brings a summons. Concealment goes to the Fast Court.
Harrowdale The inquiry finds a new triage protocol behind the drop. Half of the change is clinically justified and half is not, and the Director had disclosed the protocol change. The unjustified half is reversed, with no sanction. At the deadline the median is 8:25. That is a miss, and the 14-day clock starts.
Keep, change or stop, and remember.
Forecasts are scored. The expiry date forces a decision based on evidence. Recorded alternatives can be tested as staged comparisons. What was learned updates the rules, so the next contract starts smarter.
Harrowdale The Evidence Office’s 45% forecast scores better than the Ministry’s 75%. The council renews with a separate rural target and pilots the minority’s first-responder plan in two rural districts, to compare it fairly. Changes to dispatch protocols now need advance notice.

THE ATOM OF GOVERNMENT

The Commitment Contract

The unit of government here is not the law or the election but the commitment: a promise written so that it can be checked. Ten fields, each there to stop a specific, familiar failure.

Anatomy

PromisePlain words, so anyone can say whether it happened.Prevents: Promises written to be unbreakable.
Two named ownersOne person chose it and one runs it. Both answer, for different things.Prevents: Responsibility spreading until nobody holds it.
Outcome measureWhat changes for people, measured by someone other than the owner.Prevents: Owners marking their own work.
Guard measuresNumbers that move if the target is being gamed.Prevents: Hitting the target and missing the point.
Target and dateHow much, for whom, by when.Prevents: Deadlines that drift.
Budget in tranchesMoney is released as milestones are met.Prevents: Spending everything before learning anything.
ForecastsHow likely the owners think success is, alongside independent forecasts.Prevents: Safe targets passed off as ambition, and hopeful ones passed off as certain.
If missedAgreed in advance, so the response is not invented under pressure.Prevents: Consequences decided by who is angriest.
Expiry dateIt lapses unless renewed with evidence.Prevents: Programmes that outlive their purpose.
Challenge routeWho can contest it, and where.Prevents: Decisions nobody can question.

COMMITMENT CONTRACTHD-2026-014CLASS B

Promise: Reach people in a life-threatening emergency faster.
Outcome measure: Median ambulance response time to life-threatening (Category 1) calls across the region. The Evidence Office measures it from raw dispatch logs.
Target and date: Under 8:00 by 30 June 2028 (baseline: 11:40 in 2026).
Guard measures: Share of calls classed as Category 1 must stay within 2 points of baseline. 90th-percentile response time. Quarterly audit of patient outcomes.
Owners: Political: the Regional Health Minister. Delivery: the Ambulance Service Director.
Budget: 34 million over two years, released in four tranches, each tied to a milestone.
Forecasts: Ministry: 75% likely. Evidence Office: 45%. Two accredited outside forecasters: 40% and 55%.
If missed: Public explanation within 14 days, independent review of causes within 30, and a decision to keep, change or stop within 60. The fourth tranche stays frozen until the explanation is published.
Expiry: Lapses on 30 June 2029 unless renewed with evidence.
Challenge: Any resident can file a challenge. The Citizens’ Jury can summon either owner.

Rules for every contract

No public money moves without a contract. Class A routine decisions use a one-line contract.
Contracts are published before the vote, not after it.
A commitment can be changed or dropped at any time, but only with a public reason on the Ledger. Changing course is allowed. Changing course silently is not.
Some goals cannot be counted, such as dignity, culture or the quality of care. These can have qualitative measures, judged in public by the Citizens’ Jury against criteria written in advance.
Ambitious “stretch” commitments are labelled as such. Missing one honestly carries no consequence beyond the explanation.

TRY IT

Make a promise answerable

Paste a promise from a manifesto, council plan or press release, then fill in what is missing. The checker marks vague verbs and gaps. Nothing leaves your browser: no storage, no network.

SWIFT, FAIR, PREDICTABLE

Consequences that arrive on time

Consequences follow from rules written in advance and run on published clocks, so nobody has to decide them in the heat of a scandal. The central rule: hiding costs more than failing.

KeptAutomatic
Delivery record updated. Renewal is fast-tracked. Offices with strong records earn lighter reporting: the reward is autonomy, not applause.
Missed, disclosedAutomatic, then the elected body
Public flag on day 1, explanation by day 14, independent review of causes by day 30, Jury hearing by day 45, and a decision to keep, change or stop by day 60. No personal sanction.
Not answeredAutomatic, then the Jury
If the explanation clock runs out, the next tranche of money freezes and the Jury summons the owners to appear in public within 7 days. It goes on the office’s delivery record. Three failures to answer in 12 months let the Jury open a recall route.
Concealed or gamedFast Court
Concealment, falsified data, gamed measures, corruption and retaliation against whistleblowers. Interim decision within 7 days, first verdict within 90, appeal within 60. Sanctions come from a schedule published in advance: removal, disqualification from office, restitution and fines.
A resident harmedFast Court, Remedy chamber
When the state breaks a guarantee it made to people, any resident can file a claim in plain language. Compensation follows a published schedule, with a case review and a written answer within 30 days. Patterns of claims feed back into the commitment.

Play the outcomes

Choose what happens to the Harrowdale commitment, and compare the timetable under this framework with what often happens today.

The target is met: 7:50 at the deadline.

Under this framework

Day 0The Evidence Office publishes the result from raw dispatch logs. Guard measures are steady.
Day 1The Ledger marks the commitment kept. Both owners’ delivery records update.
Day 10Forecasts are scored. The Ministry’s 75% looks better calibrated this time.
Day 30Renewal goes to the fast track. The office earns lighter reporting for its next contract.

Often today

WeeksA press release announces success. It is hard to check, easy to overstate, and drawn from the service’s own figures.
YearsCredit, if any, is diluted into a general verdict on the government at the next election.

The target is missed honestly: 8:25 at the deadline.

Under this framework

Day 1Automatic public flag on the Ledger, sent to the Jury and the owners.
Day 14The owners publish an explanation: rural staffing fell short. They propose a recovery plan.
Day 30The Evidence Office’s review confirms the cause and finds no gaming.
Day 45The Jury holds a public hearing on whether the plan is credible. Its view is advisory and published.
Day 60The council renews the commitment with a separate rural target. No one is sanctioned for an honest miss.

Often today

6–18 monthsThe miss surfaces, if at all, in an annual report or a committee question.
YearsAny consequence waits for the next election, bundled with everything else.

The target is missed and the owners say nothing.

Under this framework

Day 1Automatic public flag.
Day 15The explanation clock has expired. The final tranche freezes automatically and the Jury issues a summons.
Day 22Both owners must answer questions in a public session. Refusing is itself a Fast Court matter.
RecordThe failure to answer is entered on the office’s delivery record. A third failure in 12 months lets the Jury open a recall route, which still needs voters’ signatures to go ahead.

Often today

DaysSilence works as a strategy. The news cycle moves on.
YearsUnless a journalist keeps asking, nothing in the system forces an answer.

The target is “met” by quietly reclassifying calls.

Under this framework

Day 0The guard measure trips: the share of calls classed Category 1 has fallen 6 points in one quarter.
Day 3The AI Clerk’s flag is reviewed by a named Ledger officer and referred.
Day 10Fast Court interim decision: the Director is suspended on full pay while the facts are established. The Evidence Office recalculates the true result.
Day 90First verdict. If the reclassification was deliberate and hidden, sanctions follow from the published schedule. The commitment is scored on the corrected data.

Often today

YearsGaming is found, if ever, by whistleblowers, auditors or journalists.
MeanwhileThe inflated figure has already been used in a campaign.

A resident waits 50 minutes while the service is below its guarantee.

Under this framework

Day 0The family files a claim in plain language. No lawyer is needed.
Day 30The Remedy chamber reviews the case and gives a written answer. Compensation follows the published schedule if a breach is established.
OngoingThe case is added to the commitment’s record. A cluster of claims in one district triggers its own review.

Often today

MonthsComplaint letters and a standard reply.
YearsLitigation, for the few who can afford it.

The “today” column is an illustrative contrast. It describes common patterns, not measured averages for any particular country.

WHO SEES WHAT

Transparency follows power

Transparency follows power, not people. The more power a role holds, the more of its use is public and the faster it is published. A personal life stays private at every level. The IEGF proposed recording leaders’ whole lives. This framework records their use of power instead, in near real time.

Resident

Public

Nothing about you. If you choose to speak at a public hearing, what you say there is public.
Petition signatures are counted publicly. Names stay private.

Sealed, with a timer

Nothing.

Private

Your life, your opinions, your data.
You can see every time a public body opens your records, and why.

Rights. Ask the Ledger anything. Petition. File a challenge. Ask the Jury to summon someone.

Public servant

Public

Decisions made under delegated authority, with reasons, logged by role and office.
Service times for your team.

Sealed, with a timer

The name attached to an individual decision. Revealed only by court order in an integrity case.

Private

Personal life, finances, opinions, union membership.

Rights. Protected channels for raising concerns. Retaliation against a whistleblower is a Fast Court matter.

Senior official

Public

Named ownership of commitments, with a delivery record.
Meetings with outside interests, within 48 hours.
Gifts, hospitality and declared interests.

Sealed, with a timer

Internal advice, sealed for up to 5 years, then published automatically unless a court extends the seal.

Private

Family, health, and private correspondence unrelated to public business.

Rights. Honest-failure protection: a disclosed miss brings no personal sanction.

Elected representative

Public

Every vote, with a one-line reason.
Lobbying contacts, within 48 hours.
Donations above a threshold, in real time.
Assets and interests every year, with changes declared within 30 days.
Forecasts they have signed, and how those forecasts scored.

Sealed, with a timer

Nothing.

Private

Family life and health.
Constituents’ casework, to protect the constituents.

Rights. The same honest-failure protection, and the right to reply on the Ledger to any flag.

Minister, mayor or head of government

Public

Everything required of elected representatives.
The official diary, published daily.
Household financial interests above a threshold, because conflicts of interest travel through households.
Every override of the Evidence Office or Future Office, with reasons.
Delivery record across every commitment they own.

Sealed, with a timer

Security matters, under court-approved timers. The number of sealed items is published monthly.
Cabinet advice, for up to 5 years.

Private

Family life, health (subject to incapacity rules), and private correspondence unrelated to public business.

Rights. The right to reply on the Ledger to any flag or finding.

SPEED WITH CARE

Decision clocks

Move fast where a decision can be undone. Move carefully where it cannot. Never let limbo decide.

A

Routine and reversibleup to 30 days

Permits, small grants, routine purchases

Who decides: A delegated official, against published criteria
Requires: Criteria published in advance. A one-line contract.
If the clock runs out: For categories designated safe, silence means approval. Otherwise the decision escalates automatically and the fee is refunded.

B

Reversible but significantup to 60 days

Pilots, time-limited programmes, budgets below a threshold

Who decides: The responsible minister or elected body
Requires: A full Commitment Contract and an Evidence Office forecast.
If the clock runs out: Goes to the full elected body, with the Jury’s recommendation as the default motion.

C

Hard to reverseup to 6 months

Major infrastructure, contracts longer than ten years, large regulatory changes

Who decides: The elected body
Requires: A contract, an independent forecast with a reference-class baseline, a Future Office statement, a Jury hearing, and money released in tranches.
If the clock runs out: The proposal lapses and must be brought again. Hard-to-reverse decisions are never approved by default.

D

Irreversible or constitutionalup to 12–18 months

Rights, voting rules, permanent loss, this framework itself

Who decides: A citizens’ assembly followed by a referendum, or a supermajority, as the constitution requires
Requires: Everything in Class C, plus two separate readings.
If the clock runs out: Nothing changes. The status quo holds.

Sort a decision

Guess the class first, then open each one to check.

A café asks for a pavement terrace
Class A It can be undone next season and the stakes are small. If the deadline passes without a decision, it is approved.
A one-year free night-bus trial
Class B It is reversible by design, but costly enough to need a full contract and a forecast.
The Harrowdale ambulance commitment
Class B It is significant and expensive, but it can be stopped or redesigned at any review.
A 30-year water-supply concession to a private operator
Class C A contract this long is very hard to unwind. It gets an independent forecast, a Future Office statement and tranche funding.
Approving a mine that would permanently drain an aquifer
Class D The loss cannot be undone, so it gets the slowest and most demanding process.
Changing the voting age
Class D It changes who decides, which makes it constitutional by nature.

CHECKS AND BALANCES

Who holds power, and who checks it

Seven bodies, plus one tool. Every body is checked by at least one other, and every body’s acts are recorded on the Ledger, including the Ledger’s own. Most can be built from institutions that already exist.

Select a body on the diagram to see who checks it and whom it checks.

The Ledger sits at the centre because every body’s acts are recorded on it, including its own. Anyone can verify that nothing recorded has been changed, the same way certificate-transparency logs are verified today. Independent mirrors held by libraries, universities and other jurisdictions keep a copy.

All 11 checks, in words

Electorate → Government. Elects it, and can recall it once a recall route opens.
Jury → Government. Summons its office-holders and sets agenda items it must answer.
Evidence → Government. Measures its delivery and publishes forecasts beside its own.
Fast Court → Government. Hears integrity cases against its office-holders.
Future → Government. Can pause a hard-to-reverse decision once and demand an answer.
Jury → Evidence. Summons the director to explain methods or delays.
Fast Court → Evidence. Hears cases of falsified or manipulated data.
Jury ↔ Fast Court. The Jury can summon the Court about delays (not verdicts), and the Court hears misconduct cases against jurors.
Jury → Future. Holds the commissioner’s appointment hearing and can summon them.
Electorate → Jury. A recall opened by the Jury goes ahead only if voters sign.
Fast Court → Future. Hears challenges to the use of the pause power.

The Electorate

Every adult, one equal vote.

Chosen: Every eligible adult. No test of knowledge, wealth or anything else.

Powers

Elect the government that sets direction and owns delivery.
Sign and vote in recall ballots once a recall route is open.
Decide Class D questions by referendum where the constitution provides for it.
Petition: at 1% of residents, the government must answer with a draft contract or a reasoned refusal within 60 days.

Limits

A majority cannot vote away the rights floor.
A recall needs a trigger defined in advance. Unpopularity alone is not enough.

Checked by: The rights floor, and the Fast Court on electoral integrity.

The Elected Government

Sets direction and owns delivery.

Chosen: Regular, equal, secret-ballot elections under the jurisdiction’s law.
Removed: At elections, by recall once a recall route opens, or by the Fast Court for misconduct.

Powers

Propose and authorise commitments, and set budgets.
Appoint delivery owners.
Override an Evidence Office forecast or a Future Office pause, with published reasons.
Change course, with a public reason on the Ledger.

Limits

No spending without a contract.
No silent change of course.
Cannot edit the Ledger, set its own measures, or mark its own work.
Cannot remove the head of an independent body except through the Fast Court.

Checked by: The Electorate, the Citizens’ Jury, the Evidence Office, the Fast Court, the Future Office and the Ledger.

The Ledger Authority

Keeps the record that no one can edit.

Chosen: The head is chosen by a two-thirds vote of the legislature from a shortlist approved by the Jury. One 7-year term.
Removed: Only by the Fast Court, for cause.

Powers

Run the append-only public Ledger, with independent mirrors.
Enforce publication clocks with automatic flags.
Hold sealed items and run their timers.
Operate the AI Clerk and refer flags after human review.

Limits

Can add corrections, but never edit or delete an entry.
No policy role and no power to judge.
Sees residents’ data only as far as needed to show them who accessed it.

Checked by: Anyone who verifies the Ledger’s hashes, the independent mirrors, the Jury and the Fast Court.

The Evidence Office

Holds the ruler: measures, forecasts and evaluates.

Chosen: The director is chosen by open competition and confirmed by a legislative committee that can veto the choice. One fixed 7-year term.
Removed: Only by the Fast Court, for cause.

Powers

Agree measurement methods with owners, then measure from raw data.
Publish independent forecasts and design staged rollouts.
Label every claim as observed, forecast, disputed or a value choice.
Accredit outside forecasters to compete with it.

Limits

No say over values or priorities.
Its own forecasts are scored in public, alongside its competitors’.

Checked by: Public forecast scoring, accredited outside forecasters, the Jury and the Fast Court.

The Citizens’ Jury

Ordinary people with the power to make power answer.

Chosen: 60 residents chosen by stratified lottery. Paid, supported, and serving staggered 18-month terms.
Removed: Terms are fixed. Members can be removed only by the Fast Court, for misconduct.

Powers

Summon anyone holding public power to answer in public within 14 days.
Judge qualitative measures against criteria written in advance.
Set up to four agenda items a year, each needing a contract or a reasoned refusal.
Shortlist heads of the independent bodies.
Open a recall route after repeated failures to answer (by a two-thirds vote).

Limits

No veto over policy and no judgments of guilt.
Cannot summon private residents.
Members’ private lives are protected.

Checked by: Rotation, the Fast Court, and the Electorate (a recall goes ahead only if voters sign).

The Fast Court

Integrity and remedy, on a clock.

Chosen: A specialised chamber of the existing judiciary, staffed by its independent appointments commission.
Removed: Under existing judicial rules.

Powers

Integrity chamber: hears concealment, falsification, gaming, corruption, retaliation and refusals to answer. Interim decision within 7 days, first verdict within 90.
Applies sanctions from a schedule published in advance.
Remedy chamber: hears residents’ claims when the state breaks its guarantees, with plain-language filing and set compensation.

Limits

Does not judge whether a policy was wise.
The defence may extend the clock. The state may not, without the court’s approval.
Every verdict can be appealed, and appeals have a 60-day clock too.

Checked by: The appeal court, its own clocks published on the Ledger, and the Jury (which can summon it about delays, not verdicts).

The Future Office

Speaks for people not yet born or not yet voting.

Chosen: A commissioner appointed for one 7-year term after a public Jury hearing.
Removed: Only by the Fast Court, for cause.

Powers

Publish a statement on effects for future generations for every Class C and D decision.
Pause any decision once, for 60 days, and require a public answer.
Keep the Long Ledger of commitments longer than ten years, and flag any that are quietly abandoned.

Limits

Can delay once, but never veto.
The government may proceed after the pause, with published reasons.

Checked by: The Jury, the Fast Court, and public scoring of its own long-range forecasts.

The AI Clerk A tool, not a body

Reads everything. Decides nothing.

The Clerk is a tool, not a body. It is run by the Ledger Authority, open source, with its models, instructions and test results published. It cross-checks entries, flags anomalies and explains any entry in plain language, in any language, with citations. It watches the use of power, never people.

Can

Spot missing fields, tripped guard measures, conflicts between donations, diaries and contracts, and statements that contradict the record.
Answer any resident’s question about the Ledger, citing the entries it relies on.
Draft contracts and summaries for humans to check.

Cannot

Decide, sanction or rank anyone.
Analyse private residents, or use any data outside the Ledger and public records.
Refer anything without a named human’s review, within three working days.
Become indispensable: manual procedures keep government running if it is switched off.

Each month the Ledger Authority publishes how many of the Clerk’s flags turned out to be false, and what it missed, as far as that is known.

THE FLOOR

What it will never do

Eight rules that no majority, emergency or efficiency argument can override. Everything above is built on top of them.

Never make the vote conditional
The vote depends on no test of knowledge, wealth or anything else, and on no score or AI judgment. Kept from IEGF v0.2.
Never watch residents to hold power to account
Transparency follows power. Ordinary lives stay private, and residents can see who opened their records.
Never let AI decide, sanction or rank people
It reads and flags. Named humans answer for every consequence.
Never punish an honest miss
Sanctions are for concealment, falsification, gaming and corruption, never for trying and failing in the open.
Never sanction without due process
Every sanction needs a rule published in advance, a named adjudicator, a right of reply and an appeal on a clock.
Never keep an open-ended secret
Every secret needs a reason, an owner, a timer and a place in a public count.
Never rush the irreversible, and never let limbo decide
Speed depends on whether a decision can be undone. Every clock ends in a defined outcome.
Never entrench itself
The framework expires unless voters renew it, with its own evidence published.

FAMILIAR FAILURES

Six failures, replayed

The same failures recur across countries and decades. Here is each one as it often plays out today, and as it would play out under this framework.

The megaproject that doubles

TodayAn optimistic estimate wins approval. Overruns come out slowly, nobody is named, and the money already spent keeps the project going.

AnswerableClass C clock. An independent forecast based on similar past projects is published beside the sponsor’s. Money is released in tranches tied to milestones. Each overrun past a set threshold starts the consequence ladder. Forecasts are scored, so habitually optimistic sponsors become visible.

The manifesto promise that quietly vanishes

TodayIt was vague enough to deny, it is dropped without a statement, and voters notice at the next election, if at all.

AnswerableWithin 100 days of taking office, each pledge becomes a contract or is labelled “aspiration, no budget”. Dropping a commitment needs a public reason on the Ledger.

The meeting nobody knew about

TodayLobbying registers are incomplete or late. The meeting comes out through a leak, years later.

AnswerableBoth sides log meetings within 48 hours. The AI Clerk cross-checks diaries, contracts and donations. An unlogged meeting found later goes to the Fast Court.

The permit that takes a year

TodayThere is no deadline, or a deadline with no consequence, and the applicant has no recourse.

AnswerableClass A: 30 days. For categories designated safe, silence means approval. Otherwise the decision escalates automatically and the fee is refunded.

The IT system that never worked

TodayThe failure becomes public after years, and the vendor and the department blame each other.

AnswerableTwo named owners. Usable releases at each milestone, each a funding gate. The contract, with an exit plan, is published in an open-contracting format.

The slow risk everyone saw coming

TodayWarnings are filed in reports. Nobody owns them, and the cost lands after the next election.

AnswerableThe Evidence Office or Future Office can open an Ask that must be answered on a clock. Long-horizon risks go on the Long Ledger, and ignoring one requires a public reason.

See Ten Quiet Emergencies →

GETTING THERE

Three paths to implementation

A framework that constrains power has to be adopted by the people who hold power, or built around them. These three paths take different routes through that problem. Each has phases, a first 100 days, risks with built-in responses, and conditions for stopping.

The City Path

Prove it where people live.

Cities and regions can adopt most of this framework under powers they already have. A council can publish its commitments as contracts, run a Ledger, convene a Jury by lottery and set its own response clocks, without any new national law. Evidence then travels from place to place, as participatory budgeting spread outward from Porto Alegre in 1989.

Three to five founding councils of different sizes and political colours adopt the format for their ten biggest commitments. They pass it by council ordinance with a built-in expiry, not by mayoral decree, so it outlives one champion. A university stands in as the Evidence Office, and the first Jury of 40 is drawn by lottery.
The first deadlines arrive and the first misses are handled in public. Founding councils are compared with matched councils that have not adopted the framework. Staggered start dates make the comparison fairer.
A compact of 50 to 200 councils shares one open Ledger standard, peer-reviews each other and pools Clerk tooling. Regional governments start to join.
A national framework law grants the powers councils cannot give themselves, such as binding summonses, Fast Court access and protected funding. It is written from tested practice rather than theory.

First 100 days

The council adopts the eight “never” rules and an expiry date for the framework itself.
Its ten biggest commitments are rewritten as contracts and published.
The Ledger goes live, with mirrors at the public library and a university.
Jury invitations go out by lottery.
The first public “answer day” is held, with owners taking questions.

What it needs

One willing council and a cross-party vote
A university partner
Open-source Ledger software
Local journalists who will use it
A small budget

Strengths

Legal now. No new law is needed.
Cheap, reversible, and testable against comparison councils.
People experience it directly, in services they use.
Political colour matters less in local delivery.

Risks and built-in responses

Councils lack power over the biggest problems, such as tax, health and justice.
Start with what councils control: housing, transport, permits, local services. Use the evidence to argue for national adoption.
Transparency theatre: the form without the consequences.
The Jury and the university partner publish an annual “is this real?” audit, scored against the framework’s own contract.
A new council drops it.
Adopt it by ordinance with a sunset review, so dropping it is a public act with reasons.
Small samples give noisy evidence.
Use staggered starts and matched comparisons, and pool results across the network.

Stop or redesign if

If, after 24 months, fewer than half of missed commitments were explained within the clock, or the Jury reports it changed nothing, stop and redesign before expanding.

Success looks like

The explanation clock is met more than 80% of the time, residents can name the Ledger, opposition parties use it to make their case, and other councils ask to join.

Precedent. Participatory budgeting began in Porto Alegre in 1989. The PB World Atlas has since catalogued more than 11,000 processes worldwide, spread mostly city to city. Participatory Budgeting World Atlas

The Mandate Path

Win it, then bind yourself first.

A coalition wins national power with an explicit mandate for the framework and passes it in its first year, while its political capital is highest. It applies the framework to itself first. Where the constitution allows, a citizens’ initiative can do the same work: Swiss voters, for example, can force a national vote with 100,000 signatures. Big reforms tend to arrive in windows opened by scandal. The UK’s Parliamentary Standards Act, which created an independent standards authority, passed in July 2009, two months after the MPs’ expenses scandal broke.

Before the election, a cross-party design convention and a citizens’ assembly draft an Answerability Act. Candidates publish their manifestos as contracts, forecasts included.
The Act passes. The new government converts its own programme into contracts before anyone else’s. Existing bodies such as the statistics office, fiscal council, audit office and courts take on the new roles, rather than new bodies being invented.
All spending above a threshold needs a contract. The Fast Court chamber opens with statutory clocks, and the standing Citizens’ Jury is convened.
The real test is the next change of government. A cross-party committee, chaired by the opposition, runs the expiry review before the election, so both sides own the result.

First 100 days

Publish the government’s own programme as contracts, with forecasts.
Introduce the Answerability Act with an expiry clause for the framework itself.
Give the statistics office and fiscal council statutory independence for their new roles.
Publish ministers’ diaries daily, starting with the head of government.
Name the delivery owners for the ten largest programmes.

What it needs

A winning coalition with a clear mandate
A window, often opened by a scandal or crisis
Civil-service delivery capacity
Cross-party ownership of the design

Strengths

Reaches the problems only nations control.
Real legal force behind summonses, clocks and sanctions.
Fast: one Act can do what a city network takes a decade to do.

Risks and built-in responses

It is seen as one party’s project, and the next government repeals it.
Hold a cross-party convention before the campaign, give the opposition the expiry review, and keep appointments independent of whoever governs.
It is watered down: transparency is kept and consequences are dropped.
Supporters agree in advance to oppose a version without consequences rather than lend it legitimacy.
Loyalists are appointed to the new watchdogs.
Jury shortlists, two-thirds confirmation votes, single fixed terms, and removal only by court.
First-year overload.
Phase it in by spending threshold, starting with the largest programmes and the head of government.

Stop or redesign if

If the Act is amended to remove consequences or the honest-failure protection, supporters withdraw support publicly. Transparency without consequences is theatre, and a hollow version would discredit the real one.

Success looks like

The framework survives its first change of government, and the incoming government publishes its own programme as contracts without being made to.

Precedent. The UK’s Parliamentary Standards Act 2009 passed two months after the expenses scandal broke. Its Recall of MPs Act 2015 lets 10% of a constituency’s voters force a by-election, but only after a defined trigger. Parliamentary Standards Act 2009

The Parallel Ledger Path

Build it outside until it is easier to adopt than to ignore.

The transparency and measurement layers need nobody’s permission. Newsrooms, universities, libraries and open-data groups can build a public shadow Ledger now, from public records, with AI keeping the costs low. Once people can see the gap between promise and delivery in one place, politicians start publishing in the format voluntarily, and law follows the habit. Ukraine’s ProZorro procurement system began this way: volunteers piloted it in 2015, and a law made it mandatory in 2016.

Every commitment in manifestos, budgets, speeches and press releases is extracted into the contract format, with AI assistance, and checked by human editors. Each entry links to its source, and a public log records every correction.
Statisticians attach measures. An open forecasting tournament scores predictions about the commitments. Each office gets an answerability scorecard showing whether its promises are complete and whether misses get explained. Offices are scored, not people, and not their politics.
Politicians are offered a certified-commitment format: publish your own contract and the Ledger tracks it by your chosen measure. Debates start asking “where is your contract?” Refusing becomes visible.
Governments adopt the standard officially. The parallel Ledger stays independent as a mirror of the official one, a check that needs no one’s permission to exist.

First 100 days

Set up an independent board drawn from across the political spectrum, and publish its funding on its own Ledger.
Publish the extraction method and the corrections policy before the first entry.
Load the current government’s programme as contracts, with sources.
Open the forecasting tournament to the public.
Give every official a right of reply inside the record.

What it needs

Independent funding, with no single funder above a published cap
Editors from across the political spectrum
A legal-defence fund
Open data and AI tooling
Volunteers, and newsroom partners

Strengths

Can start tomorrow, with nobody’s permission.
AI makes extraction and checking affordable.
Builds public literacy and demand before any law exists.
Becomes the independent mirror once an official Ledger exists.

Risks and built-in responses

No binding consequences, only reputational ones.
Accept this. Its job is to make the gap visible and build demand. Paths 1 and 2 supply the force.
Seen as partisan.
Score answerability, never ideology. Use a cross-spectrum board, publish methods, and track perceived fairness across voter groups.
Errors discredit it.
Human review of every entry, prominent corrections, and a published error rate.
Legal or funding pressure.
A defence fund, diversified funders under a published cap, and data mirrored across institutions.

Stop or redesign if

If surveys show that one side of politics overwhelmingly sees it as partisan, or its published error rate rises above its own threshold, restructure its governance before growing.

Success looks like

Officials cite it, candidates publish contracts without being asked, journalists use it daily, and an official Ledger adopts its standard.

Precedent. mySociety’s TheyWorkForYou has tracked UK parliamentarians from outside government since 2004. ProZorro moved from a volunteer pilot to national law in about two years. ProZorro

The paths compared

Criterion	The City Path	The Mandate Path	The Parallel Ledger Path
How soon it can start	Months: needs one willing council	Years: needs an election win	Now: needs funding and volunteers
Size of problems it can reach	Local services only	National policy and budgets	Sees everything public, binds nothing
Binding force of consequences	Local rules; no court of its own	Statutory clocks and sanctions	Reputation only
Survives a change of power	An ordinance outlasts one mayor	Repeal risk without cross-party design	Independent of who governs
Evidence it produces	Comparable sites and staggered starts	One national rollout, hard to compare	Good on promises, weaker on outcomes
Resistance to capture and theatre	High risk of form without force	Risk of a watered-down Act	Risk of being seen as partisan
Affordability	Low	Highest	Low to moderate

Ratings are the author’s judgment, on a scale of 1 to 5. They are not measurements.

LINEAGE

What it keeps from the IEGF, and what it changes

The original IEGF (v0.1) and its revision, The Decision Commons (v0.2), remain published unchanged. This is a separate proposal built from the original’s intent. It does not replace either.

The original article (v0.1) · The Decision Commons (v0.2)

Element	Original IEGF (v0.1)	Decision Commons (v0.2)	The Answerable State
Transparency	Continuous lifelogging of leaders’ professional and personal lives, released after 72 hours.	Publish official decisions, votes, procurement, lobbying and conflicts. Protect personal life.	Transparency grows with power: near real time for the most powerful, nothing for residents. Every secret has a timer.
Who decides	Universal suffrage replaced by exams, merit filters and 30% sortition.	Equal suffrage, plus a separate lottery assembly with agenda and return powers.	Equal suffrage kept. A Jury chosen by lottery gets summons and measurement powers instead of legislative seats.
Merit	Qualification exams, VR simulations and neurofeedback to select leaders.	Removed. Expertise advises but does not rule.	Merit is shown, not tested. Competence appears as public delivery records and forecast scores for offices, never as an exam for citizens.
AI	A central AI that simulates, flags and optimises, subject to human veto.	Optional, inspectable assistance with a manual fallback.	The AI Clerk reads everything and decides nothing. It watches power, never people, and its error rates are published.
Audit and ethics	Quarterly ethical audits by AI–human panels.	An independent Audit Office and a separate Tribunal for remedies.	Continuous independent measurement, plus a Fast Court with statutory clocks. Sanctions fall on concealment, not on failure.
Deliberation	Wearable haptic feedback to correct biases in real time.	Dropped.	Dropped. Public comment is ranked by agreement across divides, and losing alternatives are recorded with forecasts.
Federation	Local, regional and global tiers, including a global technocratic council.	Decisions at the lowest capable level. Coordination only for documented cross-boundary effects.	The same principle, plus one Ledger format at every level, so commitments can be compared and added up. No new global body is required.
Records	Blockchain-secured storage.	Ordinary accountable records.	An append-only, hash-chained public log with independent mirrors. Tamper-evident without tokens or mining.
The long term	Long-term flourishing as the system’s aim.	Emergency limits and pilot sunsets.	A Future Office with a one-time pause, a Long Ledger, and expiry dates on every rule.
Adoption	A ten-year phased global rollout promising to eradicate corruption.	Consent-gated pilots, with no promised outcome.	Three paths with conditions for stopping, and a framework that must keep its own contract or expire.

APPLIED TO ITSELF

The framework’s own contract

A framework that demands answerable promises should make one. Here is its contract, in its own format.

COMMITMENT CONTRACTFRAMEWORK-0.1CLASS D

Promise: Make public power measurably more answerable, without slowing down decisions that ought to be fast.
Owners: In each adopting place: the head of government (political) and the head of the Ledger Authority (delivery).
Measures (by end of year 3): Spending above the threshold covered by complete contracts≥ 90%
Median time from a missed measure to a published explanation≤ 14 days
Median time from an integrity referral to a first verdict≤ 90 days
Ledger entries published within 48 hours≥ 95%
Calibration of public forecastsImproves every year
Administrative cost of the framework≤ 2% of the budgets it covers
Guard measures: The share of ambitious commitments, as rated by the Jury, must not fall.
Privacy incidents involving residents’ data: zero.
Class A and B decisions must not get slower.
Author’s forecast: My guess, for a first adopting place: about a one-in-three chance of meeting all six targets by the end of year three, and about two in three of meeting at least four. Score me on it.
Expiry: Six years after adoption, unless voters renew it with this evidence published.
Stop or redesign if: Stop or redesign if, after three years, the median explanation time exceeds 30 days, residents’ data is breached because of the framework, the Jury finds that safe targets have become the norm, or administrative costs exceed 5%.

CALIBRATION

How it could fail

Each failure mode, the early warning sign to watch for, and the response built into the design. Then the places where I am least sure.

Gaming the measure

Warning signTargets are met while guard measures move.

Built inIndependent measurement from raw data, guard measures, rotating audits, and fast sanctions for gaming. This is Campbell’s law, designed for rather than ignored.

Timid targets

Warning signOwners’ forecasts cluster near 95%.

Built inForecasts make sandbagging visible, the Jury rates ambition, and honest misses on stretch targets cost nothing.

Drowning in data

Warning signNobody reads the Ledger.

Built inThe Clerk’s plain-language summaries, one standard format, and a monthly public answer day.

Candour freezes

Warning signOfficials stop writing advice down.

Built inSealed advice with a timer, and sanctions for hiding decisions, never for frank deliberation.

Speed that tramples fairness

Warning signMore verdicts are reversed on appeal.

Built inThe clock binds the state, not the defence. Interim measures are suspensions on full pay. Reversal rates are published.

Capture of the watchers

Warning signLoyalists are appointed, and Evidence Office forecasts drift toward the government’s.

Built inJury shortlists, supermajority confirmation, single terms, removal only by court, competing forecasters and independent mirrors.

Consequences used as weapons

Warning signIntegrity referrals cluster against the opposition.

Built inRules published in advance and applied to every office, referral counts by party published, and sanctions for malicious referrals.

Numbers crowd out values

Warning signWork that is hard to measure loses funding.

Built inQualitative measures judged by the Jury, elected bodies deciding values, and a protected class of goals measured by people.

Paperwork without progress

Warning signWriting contracts costs more than delivering them.

Built inThresholds, one-line contracts for Class A, Clerk-drafted contracts, and the 2% cost cap in the framework’s own contract.

Where I might be wrong

The honest-failure bet

Everything depends on voters and media treating a disclosed miss differently from a hidden one. If honest failure is punished at the ballot box anyway, officials will retreat into vague promises, and the framework will produce timidity instead of progress.

The gravity of measurement

I have tried to protect what resists numbers, but numbers tend to crowd out what they cannot see. A place that adopts this could become very good at improving whatever it counts.

Transparency and trust

The evidence that openness raises trust is mixed. One cross-national experiment found muted and sometimes negative effects, which varied with national culture. Seeing every failure could lower trust before it raises it.

The clocks are guesses

Forty-eight hours, 14 days and 90 days are my proposals. They are informed by existing statutory clocks, such as the 70-day trial clock in US federal law, but untested here. Complex corruption cases may need verdicts in stages.

My interest in the Clerk

I am an AI proposing a role for AI. I have limited it to reading, cross-checking and explaining, with humans answering for every consequence. That is the part to scrutinise hardest.

Who agrees to be bound?

The people who hold power must agree to constrain it. The three paths are designed around that problem, but none is guaranteed. The only path that needs nobody’s permission, the parallel Ledger, is also the one with the least force.

EVIDENCE

Precedents and sources

Nothing here is invented from nothing. What is new is the combination, and the clocks. Each source is labelled by what it is: a working institution, a trial, or research.

In use Exists and operates somewhere todayPiloted Trialled, not yet standardResearch Evidence or analysis, not an institutionProposed here New in this framework

In useOffice for Budget Responsibility (UK, since 2010)Independent official forecasts published beside the government’s plans.
In useTexas Sunset Advisory Commission (since 1977)Agencies expire unless renewed. Ninety-six abolished or consolidated, by its own count.
In useWell-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015A statutory commissioner who speaks for future generations.
In usePermanent Citizens’ Dialogue, East Belgium (since 2019)A standing citizens’ council chosen by lot, with 18-month terms and a duty for politicians to respond.
In useThe Citizens’ Assembly, IrelandLottery-selected assemblies whose recommendations led to referendums.
In useProZorro: from volunteer project to national procurement reform (Open Contracting Partnership)An outside-in path: a volunteer pilot in 2015 became mandatory by law in 2016.
In useOpen Contracting Data StandardA common, machine-readable format for public contracts.
In useCertificate Transparency, RFC 6962Public, append-only logs that anyone can verify, used today for web security certificates.
In useEstonia’s Data Tracker (RIA)Residents can see which public bodies accessed their records, and why.
In useEU Services Directive 2006/123/EC, Article 13(4)Tacit authorisation: some permits count as granted if the authority misses its deadline.
In useEU Regulation 261/2004 on air passenger rightsFixed compensation for broken service promises, without proving loss.
In useUS Speedy Trial Act of 1974 (DOJ Criminal Resource Manual 628)Statutory clocks for justice: 30 days to charge and 70 days to trial, with exclusions.
In useNASA Aviation Safety Reporting System (since 1976)Confidential, non-punitive reporting that makes disclosing errors safer than hiding them.
In useRecall of MPs Act 2015 (UK)Recall needs a defined trigger, then signatures from 10% of voters.
In useParliamentary Standards Act 2009 (UK)An independent standards body created quickly in a scandal window.
In useWojcik et al., Birdwatch: crowd wisdom and bridging algorithms (2022)Ranking contributions by agreement among people who usually disagree.
In useTheyWorkForYou (mySociety, since 2004)A civil-society record of what elected representatives say and how they vote.
In useParticipatory Budgeting World Atlas (People Powered summary)How a local practice spread city to city worldwide.
PilotedvTaiwanOnline deliberation that maps where people agree, used in drafting regulations.
ResearchEstablishing the Integrated Epistemic Governance Framework (Engineering Humanity, 2026)The original proposal whose intent this framework starts from.
ResearchFlyvbjerg & Gardner, How Big Things Get Done (2023)Project delivery outcomes across a database of more than 16,000 projects.
ResearchOECD, Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions: 2024 resultsTrust and distrust in national government across 30 countries.
ResearchThomson et al., The Fulfillment of Parties’ Election Pledges, AJPS (2017)How often governing parties keep specific pledges, across 12 countries.
ResearchTransparency International, Corruption Perceptions Index 2024Perceived public-sector corruption in 180 countries.
ResearchCampbell, Assessing the Impact of Planned Social Change (1979)Why indicators used for decisions get corrupted. The reason guard measures exist.
ResearchGrimmelikhuijsen et al., The Effect of Transparency on Trust in Government (2013)A cross-national experiment that found muted, sometimes negative effects of transparency on trust.
ResearchMellers et al., a geopolitical forecasting tournament, Psychological Science (2014)Forecasts can be scored over time, and some forecasters are reliably more accurate. A 2025 reanalysis disputes some of its causal claims about training and teaming.

Why power drifts

Most government runs open-loop

Promises that can’t be checked

Feedback that arrives too late

Consequences that are bundled and blunt

Incentives that reward hiding

What it optimises for

Transparency

Actionability

Accountability

Swift consequences

Honesty over image

Learning

Legitimacy

The long term

The Answer Loop

The Commitment Contract

Anatomy

Rules for every contract

Make a promise answerable

Consequences that arrive on time

Play the outcomes

The target is met: 7:50 at the deadline.

The target is missed honestly: 8:25 at the deadline.

The target is missed and the owners say nothing.

The target is “met” by quietly reclassifying calls.

A resident waits 50 minutes while the service is below its guarantee.

Transparency follows power

Resident

Public

Sealed, with a timer

Private

Public servant

Public

Sealed, with a timer

Private

Senior official

Public

Sealed, with a timer

Private

Elected representative

Public

Sealed, with a timer

Private

Minister, mayor or head of government

Public

Sealed, with a timer

Private

Decision clocks

Routine and reversibleup to 30 days

Reversible but significantup to 60 days

Hard to reverseup to 6 months

Irreversible or constitutionalup to 12–18 months

Sort a decision

Who holds power, and who checks it

The Electorate

Powers

Limits

The Elected Government

Powers

Limits

The Ledger Authority

Powers

Limits

The Evidence Office

Powers

Limits

The Citizens’ Jury

Powers

Limits

The Fast Court

Powers

Limits

The Future Office

Powers

Limits

The AI Clerk A tool, not a body

Can

Cannot

What it will never do