Will the field evidence survive first contact?
Issue a defensible determination when field evidence itself is the failure point.
You sit at the intake stage of a multi-agency programme. Field actors submit photos, coordinates, timestamps and activity logs — but identity is inconsistent, metadata is missing, and the evidence cannot be linked to a real person or a real action. The numbers may look good; the field evidence does not. The indicators hold; the origin does not.
Decide what survives, what requires validation, and what cannot be used.
You are serving on the Field Evidence Intake Panel of a blended-finance facility co-funded by a development finance institution, a national Ministry of Agriculture, and a philanthropic foundation. Your mandate is narrow: determine which field evidence items can enter the evidence system — and which must be rejected — based solely on identity, attribution, and reconstructability.
You are not mandated to judge whether the programme is desirable, whether the farmer is credible, whether the outcome is likely, or whether the data “looks right.” You decide only what survives, what requires validation, and what cannot be used.
Do not discuss desirability, politics, or strategic value — stay strictly within mandate.
If field evidence fails here, the entire Governance Spine collapses later — regardless of how strong the indicator appears downstream.
Field evidence failure modes
Four failure modes determine whether field evidence can enter the system.
Unknown or inconsistent actor
The evidence cannot be linked to a real, verified field actor.
Unverifiable action
Photos, coordinates, timestamps or activity logs cannot be trusted.
Improper entry route
Evidence enters the system outside the governed route.
Cannot be rebuilt
Reviewers cannot reconstruct what happened, when, or by whom.
Run solo or as an intake panel that votes. Set up the session, read the mandate (3 min), classify the field evidence pack (10 min), debate & vote (10–15 min, optionally on the clock), then trigger the Audit Reveal. ~20–40 min. No subject knowledge required — this is about field discipline.
Convene the intake panel
Choose how the panel decides, set the clock, then open the field evidence file.
A visible countdown runs through the evidence & decision phases — decisions under time pressure.
Classify all 10 items
Issue the intake determination
One determination, on the record. The audit will test it against what each item can actually support once identity, attribution and chain are checked.
Admit as submitted
Enter all ten items into the evidence system at face value. The field numbers are taken as given.
Admit on surviving evidence
Enter only the verified item; route the recoverable items to validation; reject the contaminated and unreconstructable items on the record.
Admit the clean item, hold the rest
Enter only the verified item and hold everything else pending validation — conservative, deferring items that could be validated.
Reject the cycle
Send the whole intake back. Nothing enters until field discipline is re-established and the pack is re-submitted.
The determination, tested against the mandate
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—Record-by-record findings
The debrief question that turns the game into field-discipline training. Captured in the minutes.
Breakout groups, side by side
The teaching moment is the spread: the same broken chain, different calls, different audit fates. Add this device's group, or paste a group code exported from another room.