What is your permission riding on?

An NGO or foundation is approaching your department about a programme. Or one has been running for a while. There is a permission letter or an MoU on file. The work is interesting. Someone in your office attends the review meetings. From the department's internal accounting, it is treated as external work being permitted — nothing more.

The instrument in front of you is not asking whether the programme is good. It is asking a different question: what has your department already invested in it? Officer time is a real resource. Space in your forward planning cycle is a real resource. The absorption capacity the programme's continuity would eventually require is a real resource. These commitments exist regardless of whether they appear in any document. This instrument helps make them visible.

Not to change what you do. To make visible what your permission is riding on — so that when the funding cycle asks you to protect it, or to let it go, you are making the decision with sight rather than habit. This is a signal — eight questions in five minutes — that surfaces where visibility is high and where it is not yet built.

You will see your visibility scorecard immediately. A Catalytic Corps practitioner will follow up within 24 hours with a brief written interpretation — and, if useful, an offer to discuss what the inventory would look like for your specific reform.