11 minutes
Evidence, and the expertise that is missing Three kinds of evidence, each strong exactly where the others are blind — and the people whose knowledge would settle the question, who are usually not in the room and usually not paid.
What you’ll be able to do Weigh administrative records, staff process knowledge and the expertise of people most affected against one another for a specific issue, and name what has to be brought in, and paid for, before a decision is sound. Compare the responses to this question and explain your choice: What is the soundest sequence? Document a next step for Evidence, and the expertise that is missing: For the issue you are working on, list the three evidence streams and write what you already hold in each. Name the one you are missing, who holds it, what their time would cost, and the point in the timeline where their answer could still change the design. Three streams, and what each one is blind to Most internal inquiries run on one kind of evidence, and it is almost always the one that is cheapest to get. That is understandable and it produces a predictable shape of error. Records are easy to pull and they contain only the people the system managed to record. Staff are easy to ask and they answer carefully when the question sounds like an audit. The people who met the process are the hardest to reach, hold the part nobody else has, and are the ones most often asked to supply it for nothing.
Treat the three as a set. The record locates the pattern: where, how often, and to which households, at a scale no conversation can reach. The staff who run the process explain the mechanism: which step people call about, what the workaround is, which field everyone leaves blank, what happens when the timer runs out. The people who meet the process hold the meaning and the consequence: what the envelope looked like on the kitchen table, what it cost to answer, what they concluded about the division when nobody replied, and why they did not try again.
Two cautions carry across all three. First, a breakdown of numbers by race, language or disability is a direction, not an explanation. It earns its place by telling an inquiry where to look; presented as a finding on its own, it reliably gets read as a statement about the people rather than about the process, and that reading is hard to take back. Second, nobody in this work should be asked to supply their own life as data. Not a participant, whose story is theirs to tell on their own terms and with compensation, and not a colleague — no inquiry needs a staff member to disclose a disability, a family situation or a personal history in order to establish that a form is difficult.
Three evidence streams: strong at, blind to, and how to get it well The record The people who run the process The people who meet the process
Strong at: scale, pattern, change over time, comparison between places, and showing that something is happening at all rather than being reported loudly.
Blind to: everyone who never entered the process, everything the fields were not designed to capture, and every reason behind every number. A closure code says what was entered, not what occurred.
How to get it well: ask what a field actually means to the person who fills it in, check who is missing from the denominator before reading any rate, and never let a breakdown travel outside the inquiry without the explanation attached.
Strong at: mechanism. Which step generates the phone calls, which instruction everyone ignores, where the workaround is, what happens after a deadline passes, and which part of the policy has never once worked as written.
Blind to: the households that gave up quietly, and anything happening outside their own step. Also blind by caution: if the question sounds like an audit, the honest answer does not arrive.
How to get it well: ask about the process and never about the performance. Say plainly that nothing said here goes into anyone's file. Ask the question that gets real answers: what do people call you about, and what do you tell them?
Strong at: meaning, cost and consequence. What the letter seemed to be asking, what answering it took, what they understood the silence afterward to mean, and why they did not try again.
Blind to: the size of the pattern and everything happening inside the division. One experience is one experience, and it should never be asked to stand in for a population.
How to get it well: come through organizations that already hold the relationship, pay a standard rate for the time, ask while the design can still change, say exactly what will happen to what people tell you, and report back what came of it. The reporting back is the part that determines whether anyone answers next time.
Which source actually produces this? Returns fell in three consecutive cycles, and the fall is concentrated in four counties.
Choose a category The administrative record The staff who run the process The people who meet the process Almost everyone leaves the third signature block blank, so the unit stopped treating it as required.
Choose a category The administrative record The staff who run the process The people who meet the process The envelope looked like a collections notice, so it sat unopened for a fortnight.
Choose a category The administrative record The staff who run the process The people who meet the process The share of households with a recorded primary language other than English differs sharply between the highest and lowest counties.
Choose a category The administrative record The staff who run the process The people who meet the process Nobody ever said what came of the last round of comments, so this time people did not bother.
Choose a category The administrative record The staff who run the process The people who meet the process The call line has no call-back, so anyone who cannot hold for twenty minutes is simply lost from the process.
Choose a category The administrative record The staff who run the process The people who meet the process Check matches Reset Pay for the expertise before you need it to agree with you What you can change You control when community partners and advisory groups are brought in, what they are asked, whether their time is paid, and whether they see the question while it can still change.
What to watch for Do not bring people in at the end to review a decision that is already made. A late review is not participation, the people doing it know exactly what it is, and it spends trust that took years to build.
Your next step On your current issue, name the organization or advisory group that holds the missing piece, find out what a standard rate for their time would be, and put both into the plan before the design is written rather than after.
We told the division about this three times. Nobody asked us for a meeting and nobody paid us for the work we had already done. Then a report came out with a chart about our families in it, and no explanation from anyone who knows them. We would have explained it. We were never asked.
Composite community organization perspective, illustrative Private reflection, for you only: on the issue you are closest to, whose expertise is missing from the room — and how could the people most affected have shaped this work earlier than they will? Nothing you write here is collected, stored or seen by anyone.
Carry this forward Administrative records tell you what the system recorded, which is not the same as what happened. They are strong at scale and pattern and completely blind to everyone who never entered the process.
The staff who run a process know where it actually breaks, including the workarounds holding it up. That knowledge stays out of an inquiry unless someone asks for it with no audit attached and no consequence for the answer.
The people who meet the process know things neither of the other sources contains: what the letter meant to them, what answering it cost, and why they stopped. Their expertise is paid work, not a favor, and it belongs in the inquiry while the answer can still change.
A story is evidence of what happened to one person and it is not a measurement. A breakdown by race, language or disability shows where to look and never explains why — publishing it as though it did turns a finding about a process into a description of a community.
Asking a colleague to offer their own identity, disability or family history as evidence is not an inquiry method. Ask about the work, and let people volunteer nothing.
A scenario about sequencing a data breakdown, paid community reviewers and family conversations under a single quarter's budget; sorting practice that puts each piece of evidence with the source that actually produces it; and a knowledge check on what a number can and cannot establish.
For the issue you are working on, list the three evidence streams and write what you already hold in each. Name the one you are missing, who holds it, what their time would cost, and the point in the timeline where their answer could still change the design.
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Previous lesson Next lesson Carry this into practice Some problems do not yield to a rule, a reminder or a better form. Four lessons on holding a complicated internal issue still long enough to see it — ending with a team case consultation you can run with the colleagues who touch the same process.
Return to the experience: What did you notice or try, whose perspective informed it, and what would you keep or adjust?
Participation and course completion in this program do not count toward DHS-required training credits unless management, a director, or DHS leadership expressly approves an exception.
