Rationing & Friction
Rate limits per verified person
A quota is bound to the person rather than to their device or session, with a visible route to an exemption.
The count follows your verified identity, not this device or session. A new browser won’t reset it, and an agent submitting for you draws from the same allowance.
Need more this quarter? A change in circumstances (a move, a new dependent, a lost job) is grounds for an exemption.
The cap manages volume; it never decides a claim. It can never slow the channel that reports wrongful decisions.
Structured intake that resists volume-padding
Constrained fields and links to existing records carry the assessment, and a case that does not fit them goes to a person.
Hardship assistance application
Answer only the questions that apply to you. The assessment uses your answers and the records you link. Writing more does not make an application stronger.
Your answers and the linked records are assessed against the hardship criteria.
The assessment draws only on the linked records the person can see and contest. It never draws on guesses from what they left unsaid or how they said it.
Proof of personhood without CAPTCHAs
Human presence is confirmed in the background, with an in-person route offered alongside, in place of the visual puzzle that locks out people with disabilities.
Your device confirmed you’re a person automatically. No further step is needed.
The check confirms a person is present. It never asks the person to prove they are the right kind of person — no puzzle, no timed test, no image grid. When the automatic path fails, the route is in-person issuance, and no submission records which path minted the token.
Participatory budgeting as an alternative to rationing
Residents rank projects against a published budget, with verified-identity voting online and an in-person channel running beside it.
E-petition threshold design
A signing counter shows geographic spread and verification status alongside the total, treating the threshold as several signals rather than one inflating number.
Keep the mobile library service running
Open for signatures until 30 Sep. This requires a verified identity.
Signatures come from across the city.
At 10,000 signatures: a published written response within 30 days. Reached. Response due 4 Aug. At 50,000 signatures: considered for chamber debate. These commitments are published before the petition opens, and each applies automatically once its threshold is reached.
What each threshold commits the City to is published before the petition opens and applies automatically once reached, so the number is a trigger rather than an invitation to decide afterwards. Template signatures are noted in the quality panel, not deducted from the count.
Sludge audits and how they backfire
Each cataloged friction is classified as remove, replace, or preserve, so a friction doing real work gets a substitute rather than deletion.
Purely exclusionary: it deters claims and protects nothing. Pre-fill from the linked record.
Excludes people with disabilities, and bots now pass it anyway. Replace it with attestation tokens.
Rations access without saying so. Replace with the published per-person allowance and exemption route.
Reflective: the pause where errors and second thoughts surface. Keep for agents too: an agent must present it to its principal, not click through it.
The test each point must pass: is this friction purely exclusionary? Remove it. Is it doing rationing work? Give the rationing a purpose-built, published mechanism. Does it make someone reflect before a consequential act? Keep it, and make agents honor it.
Appeal volume and overturn rate as early warning
The share of appeals decided in the claimant's favor is shown beside the volume chart, so a rise in complaints is not read as abuse on its own.
Appeals are up 32% and 61% were decided in the claimant’s favor this quarter. The overturn rate has exceeded the published 45% review threshold for two consecutive quarters. A decision-quality review of the originating process has been initiated. Tribunal capacity is sized to this demand.
The two lines answer different questions: volume says how much work is arriving, the overturn rate says how much of it should never have arrived. Reading volume alone is what turns a decision-quality problem into a case for tightening access. Appeal intake is never capped.
No surfaces match this filter.