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DSI
Checklist

Red Flag Scan

Twelve binary checks you can run on any governance action in ten minutes, ending in a verdict and a publishable three-line summary.

Type
Checklist
Difficulty
foundational
Time
10 min
Version
v1.0.0
Updated
8/10/2026
governancetriageprocess

What this helps you do

The strongest signals from the deep tools, reduced to twelve yes or no questions. Yes is always the safer answer, so every no is a flag. The scan tells you how much further work an action needs, not how to vote on it.

When to use this

  • As the first pass on every governance action, before any deep tool
  • When you have ten minutes and need to know whether an action needs an afternoon
  • When you want a short, publishable statement of where you stand on the evidence

When NOT to use this

  • As a substitute for a deep review once a flag is raised
  • As a scoring system to compare proposals against each other
  • As a record of a decision: use the Decision Record for that

What you'll need

  • The action text itself
  • Any published proposer responses
  • Your own conflict register

Estimated completion time

10 minutes

Working time for one governance action, assuming the inputs listed here are already to hand.

How to use it

  1. 1Identify the action so the record stands on its own later.
  2. 2Answer all twelve checks yes or no. Do not skip one because it is hard to answer: an unanswerable check is itself a finding.
  3. 3Add a note to any check where the answer took judgement.
  4. 4Read the verdict, which is arithmetic on your own answers rather than a view of the action.
  5. 5Where a check failed, open the deep tool named beside it before forming a view.
  6. 6Copy the three-line summary into your public rationale or your working notes.

The tool

Full checklist - v1.0.0

The action itself

  • Have you read the action itself rather than only a summary of it?
  • Do you know the action type and the threshold it has to clear?
  • Is the scope of what changes stated plainly, without unexplained gaps?

Evidence

  • Are the load-bearing claims backed by a source you can open right now?
  • Can you reproduce the headline numbers from the figures given?
  • Have the proposers answered the questions already put to them in public?

The money

  • Is the budget broken into units and rates rather than a single total?
  • Is it clear whether the request is in ADA or fiat, and who carries the price risk?
  • Is any contingency stated as a percentage of a defined base?

Delivery and conduct

  • Are payments tied to milestones with acceptance evidence somebody can verify?
  • Can you verify the team's delivery record from outside the proposal?
  • Have you checked this action against your own conflict register?

Verdicts

  • Proceed: no flags raised. A floor, not a finding.
  • Proceed with questions: one to three non-critical flags, put to the proposers.
  • Escalate to deep review: any critical flag, or four or more flags in total.
  • Oppose unless answered: three or more critical flags, or eight or more in total.
Fictional Example

Invented for illustration. It does not describe a real governance action, proposal, or organisation.

Fictional ten-minute scan

  • Action: a 2.4m ADA request for three regional hubs.
  • Flag: the budget is a single total with no units or rates.
  • Flag: no acceptance evidence is named for any milestone.
  • Flag: the delivery record cited cannot be verified outside the proposal.
  • Verdict: escalate to deep review, on one critical flag and two others.
  • Summary line: "Red Flag Scan of the regional hubs request: escalate to deep review."

How to interpret the result

  • A clean scan means nothing obvious is wrong, not that the action is sound.
  • Critical checks carry the decision: one failure is enough to require a deep review.
  • The verdict moves only when an answer changes, so it is auditable against your own record.

Limitations

  • Binary checks cannot weigh magnitude: a small flaw and a fatal one score the same.
  • The scan reads the published material only. It cannot detect what was never disclosed.
  • A verdict of oppose unless answered is a reading of your answers, not advice on how to vote.

Sources and methodology

This tool restates a working method rather than an external standard, so no canonical sources are cited yet.

Downloads

  • Markdown export: the complete tool, including metadata, instructions, the template, limitations, sources and version history.

No other file formats are published for this resource. We list a format only when the file exists.

Version and governance

Current version
v1.0.0
Published
Not recorded
Last updated
8/10/2026
Next scheduled review
2/6/2027
Licence
CC BY 4.0
Editorial status
Not yet externally reviewed

No named reviewer is shown because no external review has been completed. Attribution appears only once a verified reviewer has signed off.

Changelog

  • v1.0.0 (2026-08-10) - First published edition. Becomes the default review path ahead of the deep tools.
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