PUBLIC AUTHORITY MUST BE TRACEABLE
Consequential power needs a lawful, bounded mandate and an accountable owner.
QA-06Method + integrity
Inspection should expose its own model, too.
Civic QA is an opinionated public-accountability method. It aims for evidence discipline, reproducibility, challengeability, and correction—not a false performance of view-from-nowhere neutrality.
The method is not viewpoint-free.
These commitments shape what Civic QA notices, how gates are ordered, and what may count as closure. They do not predetermine a factual finding or excuse weak evidence.
BURDEN IS READ LEAST-POWERFUL-FIRST
Inspection begins with people least able to refuse, wait, appeal, exit, or recover.
UNCERTAINTY STAYS VISIBLE
Unknown, inference, hypothesis, and verified fact do not collapse into one confident voice.
RIGHTS AND RECOURSE ARE OPERATING CONTROLS
Notice, explanation, privacy, challenge, remedy, and recovery must work in practice.
REPAIR REQUIRES EFFECTIVENESS EVIDENCE
Implementation, training, publication, or a high score cannot close a finding by themselves.
CORRECTION OUTRANKS FACE-SAVING
Material counterevidence reopens the work; prior editions and changed reasoning remain visible.
Keep observation, verification, inference, and uncertainty apart.
Claim labels reveal the decision weight a statement has earned. They also show where another reviewer can challenge or strengthen the work.
Observed fact
Directly present in the inspected record or event.
Verified fact
Confirmed against an independent attributable source.
Inference
A reasoned conclusion with confidence and alternatives visible.
Hypothesis
A plausible explanation that still needs testing.
Unknown
A gap that could change the finding or action.
The inspection must disclose its own construction.
Publish the scope, selection logic, source-search method, exclusions, reviewers, AI assistance, scoring rationale, unresolved disagreement, corrections, and what evidence would change the finding.
State where AI helped search, summarize, compare, draft, or score. Verify consequential claims against attributable sources. Do not treat model agreement as independent verification.
Explain why this subject, period, population, source set, and standard were chosen—and what remains outside the inspection boundary.
Preserve materially different reviewer judgments and the reasoning behind them. Consensus is not evidence when everyone shares the same frame or source lineage.
Never silently overwrite. Preserve the prior state, trigger, date, changed reasoning, and downstream findings that need to reopen.
A useful map can still leave terrain out.
These limits increase the duty to show scope and preserve challenge; they are not a reason to abandon inspection.
- 01
A structured score does not make the reviewer neutral or the conclusion objective.
- 02
Source volume does not establish source quality, coverage, independence, or relevance.
- 03
Legal compliance does not establish fairness, effectiveness, legitimacy, or absence of harm.
- 04
A model card, audit, benchmark, or vendor certification does not establish safe live operation.
- 05
Public data may reproduce reporting gaps, enforcement intensity, administrative choices, and historical exclusions.
- 06
A finding can be correct in one scope and wrong when generalized to another population, period, or decision path.
Bring a reproducible correction, not a vague objection.
A challenge can dispute scope, source coverage, evidence state, rationale, scoring, hard-stop handling, burden, correction, or disclosure. It does not need to agree with this method's values, but it must identify what should change and why.
- 01
Name the exact page, self-service report ID or reviewed edition, claim, and evidence cutoff you are challenging.
- 02
Provide an attributable source with publisher, date, stable link or reference, and exact locator; separate fact from interpretation.
- 03
State the proposed correction, why it changes the scope, rationale, gate, finding, or remedy, and any affected downstream claim.
- 04
Send the packet to projectshadowqa@protonmail.com without personal, confidential, medical, or legally protected information. There is no response-time SLA.
- 05
For your own self-service draft, preserve the prior export, revise locally, export a new edition, and describe what changed. Only governed review can change an official Civic QA edition or mark.
REQUIRED OUTPUTAnother reviewer can reproduce the path, identify the judgments, contest the frame, and know what would change the result.