# Responsible America — Public Scorecard Methodology

Status: initial data-model and methodology document, adopted this milestone.
Companion to `docs/fact-checking-policy.md` and `docs/legal-review-policy.md`.

Last reviewed: 2026-08-10.

## 1. What this is

Division 17 of the platform's own charter ("Responsible America Public
Scorecard") is described as existing "to close the loop back to the
ordinary citizen" — tracking what actually happens to a proposal after it
is published, not just what the proposal says. This document defines that
tracking's data model and computation rules before any page renders a
single disposition, so the rules are fixed and auditable rather than
invented ad hoc per reform.

## 2. The eight dispositions

Every reform on this platform is classified into exactly one of eight
states, in the order a real proposal would move through them:

| Disposition | Meaning |
|---|---|
| `proposal` | Published on this platform; no matching real-world enacted legislation has been identified. |
| `enacted` | A real bill implementing this reform has become law (per `current_legislation[].status`). |
| `implemented` | Enacted, and the responsible agency has taken the specific operational steps the law requires (e.g. a rule is finalized, a program is running). |
| `measured_result` | Implemented, and an independent, sourced measurement of its real-world effect exists (e.g. a GAO or CBO follow-up report). |
| `blocked` | Enacted or in progress, but formally halted (e.g. enjoined by a court, vetoed and not overridden, funding rescinded). |
| `superseded` | A later law or reform materially replaced this one's mechanism. |
| `unverifiable` | A real-world status change was reported but could not be confirmed against a primary source in this environment (see the WebFetch-blocked constraint documented in every research package this milestone). |
| `pending_review` | A status change is suspected but has not yet been researched. |

## 3. Computation rule (v1)

**Every disposition is computed, never hand-typed.** The scorecard page
computes each reform's disposition directly from that reform's own public
record at page-load time, using this rule and no other:

1. If any entry in `current_legislation` has a `status` value in the
   enacted-signal set (`enacted`, `signed_into_law`, `became_law`), the
   reform's disposition is `enacted`, citing that specific bill.
2. Otherwise, the disposition is `proposal`. If `current_legislation`
   contains one or more real bills tracking the same reform, the
   furthest-advanced bill's own `status` (e.g. `introduced`, `reported`,
   `passed_one_chamber`) is shown as context under the `proposal` badge —
   this is real legislative-tracking data already collected during each
   reform's own research pass, not a new claim.

No reform is currently computed as `implemented`, `measured_result`,
`blocked`, `superseded`, `unverifiable`, or `pending_review` — not because
those states are unused architecture, but because, as of 2026-08-10,
**every reform on this platform is a published-or-draft proposal with no
enacted implementing legislation identified.** That is the honest current
state of the Plan, not a placeholder pending future content.

## 4. What would change this

A reform's disposition changes only when its own `current_legislation`
array (or, for the later dispositions, a dedicated evidence record —
see §5) is updated through the platform's normal research pipeline: a real
bill number, a real `status`, and a real source citation. There is no
manual "set disposition to X" control anywhere in this system — the badge
a visitor sees is always a direct, reproducible function of the reform's
own public data, matching this platform's standing rule against creating
fake scores merely to populate a UI.

## 5. Future extension: implemented / measured_result / blocked / superseded

Those four dispositions require evidence beyond a bill's legislative status
— specifically, a primary-source record of executive/agency implementation
action, or of an independent measured outcome, or of a court/veto/funding
block, or of a superseding law. When such evidence exists for a specific
reform, it will be added as a structured record validated against
`data/schemas/scorecard-entry.schema.json` (already defined, currently
unused) rather than by editing the computation rule to assert an outcome
this platform has not sourced. `unverifiable` and `pending_review` are
reserved for cases where a real-world status change is suspected (e.g.
flagged in a reform's own `editorial_notes`) but has not yet been
confirmed — see §3's WebFetch-blocked-environment note, which is the most
likely source of `unverifiable` entries in the near term.