The scope-cap audit inventories everything the organization currently maintains, enforces, revises, and audits — and measures it against the governance capacity available to do so. Where the complexity budget (2.3C.2-1) governs additions, the scope-cap audit governs what already exists.
Run this audit annually at minimum, or whenever the organization suspects that its governance load has drifted past its capacity to execute with integrity.
Step 1 — Inventory Active Commitments
Catalog every active mandate, policy, product, and structural commitment the organization currently carries. For each, document:
Table 2.3C.2-1 — Commitment Inventory
Fields for cataloging each active institutional commitment
| Field | What to Record |
|---|---|
| Commitment | Name and description of the mandate, policy, product, or structural obligation |
| Date created | When the commitment was established |
| Last reviewed | When the commitment was last evaluated for continued relevance |
| Owner | Who is responsible for maintaining, enforcing, and revising this commitment |
| Governance cost | Estimated resources required to maintain, enforce, audit, and revise — expressed in staff time, budget, or capacity fraction |
| Actual enforcement | Is this commitment actively enforced, audited, and staffed? Or does it exist on paper only? |
| Retirement trigger | What condition, date, or threshold would initiate the retirement evaluation? If none exists, record "none" |
The inventory reveals two things immediately: the total governance load (sum of all governance costs) and the gap between claimed and actual enforcement.
Step 2 — Classify Commitments
Sort each commitment into one of three categories.
Load-bearing commitments directly serve the organization's chartered purpose and pass the complexity budget's three questions (load, displacement, retirement). These are the commitments the organization would rebuild if starting from scratch. They earn their governance cost. Retain and resource them.
Legacy commitments served a purpose at creation but have not been re-evaluated against current conditions. They may still be needed — but they have not been required to prove it. Submit each to the sunset schedule (2.2.5) for active renewal: define the criteria, set the review date, and require a positive decision to continue. Those that pass remain. Those that fail are retired.
Institutional fiction — rules, policies, and structures the organization claims to maintain but does not actually enforce, audit, or staff. These are worse than absent: they teach everyone in the institution that the rules are performative rather than real. The gap between claimed and actual governance is a structural dishonesty. For each item classified as institutional fiction, the organization has two options: resource it sufficiently to be genuine, or retire it immediately. Leaving it in place is not an option — it corrodes the credibility of every other commitment.
Step 3 — Measure Load Against Capacity
Total governance load: Sum the governance costs of all retained and legacy commitments (institutional fiction should already be resolved in Step 2).
Available governance capacity: The organization's actual resources for maintaining, enforcing, revising, and auditing commitments. This is not the total headcount — it is the fraction of organizational capacity allocated to governance functions.
Load-to-capacity ratio: If the ratio exceeds the organization's defined tolerance, the organization is overextended. The restraint principle demands action: retire legacy commitments that cannot justify renewal, reduce the scope of commitments that are broader than necessary, or expand governance capacity through dedicated allocation. The order of preference matters — retiring excess load is structurally sounder than expanding capacity to carry it, because expanded capacity tends to attract new load, restoring the overextension.
Step 4 — Document and Publish
The scope-cap audit is not an internal exercise. Its results are published within the organization (not necessarily externally) so that everyone who operates under the institution's rules can see what the institution actually enforces and what it has retired.
Publish: The commitment inventory with classifications. The load-to-capacity ratio. The list of commitments submitted for sunset review. The list of institutional fiction identified and resolved.
File: The audit results with the institutional charter (2.3C.1-1) as part of the governance record and as input to the organization evidence pack (2.3C.4-3).
The diagnostic question the scope-cap audit is designed to answer: if this organization had to restart with half its current rules, which half would it keep? The answer reveals which commitments carry structural load and which survive on institutional inertia. The commitments that would be dropped are candidates for sunset now — they are consuming governance capacity without delivering proportional value.
Integration Points
- Complexity budget (2.3C.2-1): The scope-cap audit governs existing commitments; the complexity budget governs additions. Run together, they form the organization's complete restraint practice.
- Sunset schedule (2.2.5): Legacy commitments identified by the scope-cap audit feed directly into the sunset schedule for active renewal evaluation.
- Institutional charter (2.3C.1-1): The charter defines what the organization is authorized to do. The scope-cap audit reveals what it actually does — and whether those match.
- Organization evidence pack (2.3C.4-3): Audit results, commitment inventories, and sunset decisions are part of the evidence pack.
Change Log
- 19 Mar 26 — Initial draft (Charisma). Four-step audit: commitment inventory, three-category classification (load-bearing, legacy, institutional fiction), load-to-capacity measurement, and publication. Connects to complexity budget (2.3C.2-1), sunset schedule (2.2.5), institutional charter (2.3C.1-1), and organization evidence pack (2.3C.4-3).