Attentiveness chose what to notice. Responsibility chooses who acts, by when, under what limits, with what remedies if we get it wrong - ‘taking care of’ what we ‘care about’. It is engagement with teeth: promises you can verify, contest, and revoke.
Quick version
- Say it precisely. Publish scope, timelines, guardrails, accountable owner, and success criteria.
- Bind it visibly. Adopt‑or‑explain pre‑commitments; publish pause/rollback triggers; wire remedies.
- Make deviation costly. Independent oversight with veto, cryptographic ledgers, clawbacks, and escrow.
Results we want
- People get timely answers, not silence.
- Power takes bounded, verifiable action, not vibes or PR.
- When harm happens, repair is routine and trust survives.
- People continue to be engaged - the co-production continues
Why Responsibility?
Listening without acting is theatre. Acting without limits is arbitrary. Responsibility is the bridge from recognition to care without granting unbounded authority.
Take this example: Your neighbor knocks: “The tree on your lot is cracking the shared wall.” A responsible reply is not “Thanks for the feedback,” but: who will inspect, when, what they’ll do if risk is high, how to appeal if the fix fails, and what you owe if you’re late.
Scale it: the “lot” is a platform, a clinic, a river. Responsibility is the move from “we heard you” to “here is the engagement contract.”
Simple ideas behind this chapter
- Answerability is the unit. If no answer is required, nobody is responsible.
- Authority must match duty. No duty without the powers (budget, access, pause) to fulfill it.
- Promises > preferences. Goodwill is fragile; verifiable commitments travel.
- Enoughness. Promise within an inner bound (what we will do) and outer bound (what we must not do). Handover/exit is part of the promise.
- Institutional memory. Make responsibilities fractal—mirrored from team to agency—so they survive leadership changes.
- Two lanes. Big changes follow the full contract; small, safe‑to‑fail bets run in a sandbox with tighter bounds and quicker cycles.
Why this matters for alignment
Goals drift when ignored stakeholders finally speak. Responsibility turns alignment into a kept‑it- honest process:
- Pre‑commitments prevent quiet goal swaps.
- Pause/rollback keeps systems corrigible at the speed of the garden.
- Remedies keep trust‑under‑loss alive when someone pays a cost.
Rule of thumb: No unchecked power; answers are required.
What good responsibility looks like
- Public obligation ledger. All promises, owners, clocks, deviations.
- Adopt‑or‑explain as default; deviations are rare and justified.
- Budget follows care. Money moves toward relational‑health outcomes, not engagement spikes.
- Graceful exit. Leaving doesn’t erase you; data/benefits/standing travel.
- Vendor humility. Contracts forbid lock‑in; mandate portability and interop; include exit drill
Oversight with teeth
- Independent board (community + domain + legal). Can pause or veto high‑impact changes; must publish reasons and declare conflicts.
- Protected budget & terms to resist capture.
- Open docket. Anyone can file a challenge; triage is public; decisions are reasoned.
- Clawbacks & penalties. Breached promises trigger automatic remedies (escrow drawdown, withheld payment, probation, or replacement).
- Public attestation. Weekly contract state and diffs are digitally signed and mirrored to a public registry.
From ideas to everyday practice (step by step)
- Translate recognition into a spec. Convert attentiveness outputs to an Engagement Contract.
- Assign a Participation Officer (PO). Runs the promise loop, tracks the ledger, escalates.
- Wire brakes before launch. Role‑based pause/rollback buttons; test them (game‑day).
- Pre‑fund remedies. Escrow for compensation and rollback costs.
- Tie payment to proof. Vendor pay linked to trust‑under‑loss and cross‑group endorsement, not raw “engagement.”
- Run adopt‑or‑explain. Integrate Assembly outputs or publish a reasoned deviation + remedy.
- Attest & publish. Independent audits compare behavior to contract; hash the diffs to a public mirror.
- Handover or shutdown. When scope ends—or trust breaks—handoff with full records, or switch off gracefully.
Engagement Contracts (the core artifact)
Every significant deployment carries a published Engagement Contract—a short, legible spec anyone can audit.
Contents (one page if possible):
- Purpose & non‑purpose: Needs we serve; what is out of scope.
- Inputs & outputs: Data sources, transformations, retention; who sees what; deletion on handover.
- Rights & guardrails: UDHR + local rights we won’t trade; red lines (e.g., no biometric expansion).
- Service levels. Severity classes (S0 life/safety; S1 livelihood; S2 convenience; S3 UX) with response windows; decision gates; who signs off.
- Pause/rollback triggers. Conditions, who can invoke (PO, oversight, quorum of affected people), and duration.
- Adopt‑or‑explain. How we adopt Assembly outcomes or explain deviations with reasons and a remedy plan.
- Remedies. Correction, rollback, compensation; escrowed funds and payout rules.
- Portability & handover. Exit with dignity: data export, API parity, “no lock‑in” tests.
- Change log. Version history with hash‑chained diffs and rationales (tamper‑evident).
- Compliance hooks. Which DPIA/HRIA/impact assessments this contract satisfies or links to.
- Contacts. Accountable person(s), term, mandate, conflicts disclosed.
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Oversight with teeth
- Independent board (community + domain + legal). Can pause or veto high‑impact changes; must publish reasons and declare conflicts.
- Protected budget & terms to resist capture.
- Open docket. Anyone can file a challenge; triage is public; decisions are reasoned.
- Clawbacks & penalties. Breached promises trigger automatic remedies (escrow drawdown, withheld payment, probation, or replacement).
- Public attestation. Weekly contract state and diffs are digitally signed and mirrored to a public registry.
Flood‑bot story: Part II
After the flood, the city’s flood‑bot must pay people on time and fix mistakes.
- Contract. Promises S1 (livelihood) cases decided in 48h; pause if denials spike >25% in any district; rollback if appeals on a rule exceed 20%.
- Owner. A named PO publishes the obligation ledger and signs weekly attestations (hashes posted publicly).
- Adopt‑or‑explain. The Assembly endorsed multiple proofs of residence. The team adopts three (utility bill, employer letter, neighbor attestations) and explains excluding bank statements (exclusion risk), offering a kiosk‑notarized sworn statement as remedy.
- Pause. Night‑shift district shows 31% denials in 24h; the oversight board hits pause; the older “30‑day proof” rule rolls back; emergency disbursements use a reversible default.
- Remedies. Wrongly denied claims get automatic compensation (late fee + apology + fast‑track). Escrow funds it the same day.
- Handover. At week six, records and models transfer to the housing office; the switch‑off is logged, and the ledger is archived.
What could go wrong (and quick fixes)
- Scope creep. Bot starts “screening fraud” unrelated to relief. Fix: Enforce outer bounds; require fresh authority for scope changes.
- Responsibility ping‑pong. Teams blame each other. Fix: Single named owner per promise; PO escalates stalled dependencies.
- Paper commitments.PDFs with no force. Fix: Escrow, clawbacks, attestation and audit triggers wired before launch.
- Unfunded mandates. Duties without budget. Fix: Block go‑live unless authority & funding match duty.
- Quiet rollbacks. Rules change without notice. Fix: Mandatory public diffs; unlogged changes are invalid.
Basic threat model
- Commitment spoofing. Selective metrics or fake dashboards → Third‑party audits; raw‑data access; reproducible queries.
- Deadline gaming. “Stopping the clock” → Clock rules (pauses logged; reasons public).
- COI capture. Decisions favor insiders → COI register, recusals, random audits.
- Appeal fatigue. Make it hard to complain → One‑click appeals; time‑boxed answers; auto‑escalation.
- Dark patterns. Opt‑outs buried → Plain‑language UX; defaults to dignity; test with affected groups.
How we keep ourselves honest (what we measure)
- Promise → delivery. % on‑time promises; median delay.
- Deviation rate & cost. How often, why, total remedy paid.
- Pause/rollback usage. Were brakes used early enough and by whom.
- Trust‑under‑loss. Did those who lost still rate the process as fair.
- Adopt‑or‑explain fidelity. % of Assembly outputs adopted; quality of explanations (peer‑rated).
- Portability/exit success. Time and completeness of handover; “exit‑with‑trust” scores.
- Audit pass rate. Contract vs behavior.
- PO responsiveness. Triage times, escalation effectiveness.
Tools you can adopt now
- Engagement Contract templates. A one‑pager + annex.
- Obligation ledger. Public tracker and API, hash‑chained.
- Adopt‑or‑explain switch. Policy toggle with standard justifications.
- Pause/rollback buttons. Role‑based, logged, testable.
- Remedy escrow. Automatic payouts on SLA breach.
- PO playbook. Triage, severity, escalation ladders.
- Deviation ledger. Who deviated, why, cost, learning.
- Interoperability clauses. Data portability, protocol options, exit tests.
- Compliance bridge. DPIA/HRIA mappings; one checklist, many filings..
How it feels to participate
- You know who owes you an answer and by when.
- If something changes, you hear why, what the fix is, and what you’re owed.
- You can pause or appeal without a lawyer.
- Leaving doesn’t erase you; you can exit and come back later.
Interfaces with the other packs
- From Attentiveness: who/what/why arrives with rights flags and uncertainties.
- To Competence: Responsibility turns needs into specs, SLAs, and brakes—safe‑to‑fail by default.
- To Responsiveness: remedies, rollbacks, and evals are routine; repair is part of delivery.
- To Solidarity: incentives favor promise‑keeping and relational health.
- To Symbiosis: bounded scopes, handover, and shutdown are success criteria.
Glossary
- Engagement Contract: The public promise‑sheet
- Obligation ledger: Live list of promises, owners, clocks, status.
- Adopt‑or‑explain: default to adopt Assembly outcomes; otherwise publish a reasoned deviation + remedy).
- Pause/rollback: Stop or revert a change; testable and logged.
- Remedy escrow: Prepaid fund to compensate or fix when we fail.
- Participation Officer (PO): Runs the promise loop and escalates.
- Attestation: Digitally signed state + diffs; tamper‑evident.
- Exit‑with‑trust: Leave with your data, benefits, standing intact..
A closing image: the signed work order
Picture a work order by the door: what will be fixed, by whom, by when; how to check the work; who to call if it fails. The signature is legible—and so is the penalty for not showing up. Teach our systems to post their work orders, sign them, and honour them. And ensure responsibility and accountability in relevant people.