{"schema_version":1,"assessment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_opportunity320_20260801","source_experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_full320_20260801","cell_id":"deadweight_loss_reduction__criminology_forensic","archetype_slug":"deadweight_loss_reduction","domain_slug":"criminology_forensic","title":"Risk-Bounded Forensic Testing-Scope and Queue Redesign","opportunity_summary":"Evaluate whether blanket testing scope, serial approvals, and coarse FIFO allocation create removable forensic delay distinct from genuine laboratory scarcity, then test a bounded redesign that preserves evidence, scientific standards, disclosure, access, exceptions, and rollback.","adopter_authorizer":"A forensic laboratory director can adopt internal workflow changes within accreditation and law; scope or priority changes additionally require the applicable submitting-agency, prosecutorial, defense-access, court, labor, accreditation, and oversight authorities identified through legitimacy review.","scores":{"meaningful_impact":{"score":4,"rationale":"If the proposed removable queue wedge exists, earlier reliable results could affect charging, release, trial, and investigative decisions while freeing analyst capacity. The magnitude and frequency of such avoidable delay are not established in the sealed packet."},"stakeholder_pull":{"score":3,"rationale":"The proposal identifies laboratories, investigators, counsel, courts, defendants, victims, and families with plausible reasons to value faster results, but provides no evidence of expressed demand, willingness to change rules, or agreement among stakeholders with conflicting interests."},"incremental_advantage":{"score":3,"rationale":"The redesign offers a testable improvement over existing blanket-scope, serial-approval, and FIFO rules, but its advantage is conditional on those rules—not analyst scarcity, instrument downtime, complex samples, mandatory review, or duplicate routing—materially causing delay."},"distinctiveness_plausibility":{"score":2,"rationale":"The mechanism composition is clearly specified, but prior art is explicitly unsearched and the packet supplies no basis for distinguishing it from existing forensic triage, differential processing, priority, or scope-limitation practices."},"technical_implementability":{"score":4,"rationale":"A shadow audit and capped pilot on predefined routine assay classes appear technically feasible without changing scientific acceptance thresholds or discarding samples. Material-finding definitions, matching rules, disparity limits, and workflow integration remain unspecified."},"adoption_authority_feasibility":{"score":3,"rationale":"The laboratory director and additional required authority categories are identified, and the nonbinding audit is low-authority. Live adoption may require coordination among agencies, counsel, courts, labor, accreditation, and oversight bodies, with no evidence that their approvals are obtainable."},"evidence_readiness":{"score":3,"rationale":"The packet specifies a comparator, problem and intervention falsifiers, monitored outcomes, exclusions, and rollback. It lacks baseline data, calibrated thresholds, operational definitions, sample-size justification, and evidence that rare high-consequence harms can be detected."},"safety_net_benefit":{"score":4,"rationale":"The proposal preserves samples, records, disclosure, defense access, supplemental testing, documented exceptions, and return to the standard pathway, while excluding higher-risk cases. These protections reduce downside but do not eliminate missed-evidence, favoritism, disparity, or displacement risks."},"scalability":{"score":3,"rationale":"The audit-and-bounded-redesign structure could be repeated across routine laboratory workflows, but differences in assay mix, information systems, law, accreditation, staffing, and interagency authority make transferability uncertain."}},"score_confidence":"MODERATE","costs":{"first_evidence":{"band_2026_usd":"10K_TO_50K","scope":"A bounded, nonbinding shadow audit at one laboratory covering pathway mapping, eligible-case sampling, current-rule comparison, delay attribution, stakeholder review, and a decision memorandum; no live workflow change.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Existing case timestamps, scope decisions, approval records, quality events, and staffing data are accessible and sufficiently structured.","The audit uses a limited set of routine assay classes and primarily internal analyst, operations, legal, and evaluation labor.","No new laboratory equipment or major information-system build is required."]},"initial_deployment_startup":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Preparation for a single-laboratory pilot, including protocol design, authority and accreditation review, preregistration, case-matching rules, staff training, workflow or software configuration, monitoring, and rollback preparation.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["The pilot remains capped at 10% of eligible intake and excludes the listed high-risk case classes.","Changes are configuration and workflow modifications rather than replacement of the laboratory information system.","Required authorities can review the pilot without prolonged litigation or procurement."]},"operational_launch":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Execution and independent evaluation of the proposed 90-day pilot at one laboratory, including concurrent standard-pathway comparison, blinded review where practicable, quality and disparity monitoring, supplemental-testing tracking, and affected-case review.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["One laboratory and predefined routine assay classes are in scope.","Existing instruments and validated scientific methods are unchanged.","The comparison can be conducted without staffing an entirely separate operational unit."]},"annual_recurring":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Ongoing operation at one laboratory after adoption, including triage documentation, exception and appeal handling, quality and disparity audits, queue-displacement monitoring, training, governance review, data maintenance, and periodic revalidation.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Recurring scope is one laboratory rather than a jurisdiction-wide network.","No material increase in supplemental testing or contested-case review occurs.","Monitoring remains human-supervised and does not require a newly developed predictive system."]}},"research_burden":"HIGH","earliest_credible_horizon":"3_TO_12_MONTHS","pipeline_gates":{"recognizable_externally_supportable_problem":{"status":"UNCERTAIN","reason":"The packet presents a recognizable, observable mechanism and a problem falsifier, but supplies no measured evidence that scope or queue rules materially contribute to delay in any target laboratory rather than genuine scarcity or necessary review."},"identifiable_adopter_or_authorizer":{"status":"YES","reason":"The laboratory director is identified for lawful internal workflow changes, and the packet enumerates the additional authority categories required for scope or priority changes."},"distinct_testable_incremental_claim":{"status":"YES","reason":"The proposal claims that validated narrowing, reordered allocation, and parallel administrative review will improve median and tail turnaround and rework relative to concurrent standard-pathway cases without exceeding preset safety, access, disparity, or displacement bounds."},"bounded_next_evidence_step":{"status":"YES","reason":"A nonbinding shadow audit can compare eligible cases under current rules, attribute delay among scope, allocation, administration, and genuine capacity causes, and falsify the wedge without changing case handling."},"no_unresolved_safety_or_authority_stop":{"status":"YES","reason":"The immediate next step is nonbinding; any live pilot is expressly conditional on approvals, excludes specified high-risk cases and rights-compromising actions, preserves all evidence, and has defined suspension and rollback triggers."},"implementation_cost_scope_and_range":{"status":"UNCERTAIN","reason":"A single-laboratory audit and pilot can be bounded into broad resource bands, but the packet lacks case volume, data quality, system-integration, staffing, jurisdictional-review, and monitoring details needed to validate the range."}},"blocking_evidence":["Evidence that testing-scope, serial-approval, or allocation rules account for a material share of delay after separating analyst scarcity, instrument downtime, sample complexity, mandatory legal review, and ordinary routing friction.","Evidence that eligible cases can be prospectively defined without using conviction likelihood, case prestige, representation, geography, or other proxies that create unequal access or favoritism.","Operational definitions and preset bounds for material missed findings, quality events, supplemental testing, rework, disparity, queue displacement, and renewal or termination.","A defensible comparison and sample plan capable of detecting turnaround improvement and decision-relevant safety signals, including rare high-consequence errors.","Written authority mapping confirming which laboratory, agency, prosecutorial, defense-access, court, labor, accreditation, and oversight approvals apply.","Prior-art research establishing whether the composition provides any incremental distinction from existing forensic triage, priority, differential-processing, or scope-limitation practices."],"next_evidence_step":"Conduct an 8-to-12-week nonbinding shadow audit of predefined routine assay classes at one laboratory. Compare current-pathway eligible cases by observed testing scope, approval steps, queue position, turnaround, rework, supplemental testing, and capacity constraints; estimate whether scope, allocation, or duplicative approvals explain a decision-relevant share of median or tail delay. Falsify further pilot development if testing and priority already track probative need, administrative steps are necessary and nonduplicative, or delay is predominantly irreducible scientific work or genuine capacity shortage. Do not alter live case handling.","research_questions":["What proportion of median and tail turnaround is attributable to testing scope, serial approvals, and coarse allocation rather than genuine capacity or required scientific and legal work?","Can bounded eligibility and priority criteria be specified before case outcomes are known while preserving neutral access and detecting unexpected inculpatory or exculpatory evidence?","How frequently does blanket testing produce material unexpected findings, and what supplemental-testing rate would narrowed initial scope create?","What comparator, matching variables, sample size, and observation period can distinguish real improvement from case-mix differences and queue displacement?","Which disparity and queue-displacement thresholds are legitimate, measurable, and acceptable to affected parties and authorizers?","Which authorities must approve each proposed workflow, scope, or priority change, and what accreditation, disclosure, labor, or court constraints apply?","Does relevant prior art already implement the same combination of validated scope criteria, priority allocation, parallel review, preserved samples, appeals, monitoring, and rollback?"],"recommendation":"VALIDATE_PROBLEM_FIRST","uncertainty_constraints":["Closed-book assessment: no external prevalence, demand, prior-art, market-size, realized-impact, or cost evidence was available.","The central causal premise is conditional on demonstrating a removable scope or allocation wedge distinct from raw forensic capacity scarcity and necessary review.","Unexpected material evidence may make apparently low-yield work valuable; the safe degree of scope narrowing is unknown.","Neutral FIFO may protect legitimacy, so alternative priority rules require authority and equity validation rather than throughput evidence alone.","Rare but severe missed findings, access denials, and quality events may require more evidence than a small 90-day pilot can provide.","Cost bands are resource-equivalent planning ranges for a bounded single-laboratory scope, not estimates derived from local staffing, systems, volume, or procurement data."],"closed_book_prior_art_boundary":"Prior art is explicitly classified as UNSEARCHED and world novelty is unmeasured. This assessment makes no claim that forensic triage, differential case processing, queue prioritization, scope limitation, or this mechanism composition is new, uncommon, or superior to existing practice."}