{"schema_version":1,"assessment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_opportunity320_20260801","source_experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_full320_20260801","cell_id":"layer_decay_and_expiration_management__ethnography_qualitative_methods","archetype_slug":"layer_decay_and_expiration_management","domain_slug":"ethnography_qualitative_methods","title":"Artifact-Level Lifecycle Governance for Qualitative Research Corpora","opportunity_summary":"Add explicit currentness, consent, retention, dependency, supersession, and disposition states to accumulated qualitative artifacts, with recurring review and authority-gated actions. A read-only shadow pilot would test whether this composition reduces retrieval of stale material and improves interpretation and reconstructability without increasing exposure, context loss, disputes, or unauthorized disposition.","adopter_authorizer":"The operational adopter is a principal investigator or research-data steward responsible for a qualitative repository. Authorization is shared or constrained by institutional ethics, privacy, legal, and records authorities, plus any recognized participant or community governance.","scores":{"meaningful_impact":{"score":4,"rationale":"If the stated failure occurs, the proposal could reduce consent-incompatible reuse, obsolete interpretations influencing claims, sensitive-material persistence, and loss of auditability. Impact magnitude and problem prevalence are not established in the sealed packet."},"stakeholder_pull":{"score":3,"rationale":"The candidate identifies concrete concerns for researchers, stewards, institutions, participants, and governed communities, but supplies no evidence that these stakeholders currently demand artifact-level lifecycle controls or will prioritize them over existing practices."},"incremental_advantage":{"score":4,"rationale":"Relative to the stated fixed-date data-management and project-archive rival, artifact-level currentness labels, dependency gates, supersession links, recurring revalidation, and restoration testing offer a clear potential improvement. Whether those additions measurably outperform the baseline remains untested."},"distinctiveness_plausibility":{"score":3,"rationale":"The mechanism composition is structurally differentiated from the stated nearest rival, but prior art is explicitly unsearched and the packet cannot establish whether comparable provenance, preservation, consent-governance, or retention workflows already implement it."},"technical_implementability":{"score":3,"rationale":"A read-only inventory, shadow labels, retrieval comparison, dependency tracing, and restore drill are technically bounded, but representing relational meaning and incomplete dependencies without decontextualization or metadata leakage is materially difficult."},"adoption_authority_feasibility":{"score":3,"rationale":"Accountable adopters and constraints are named, and analysts cannot destroy content unilaterally. Feasibility is mixed because consent, ethics, legal, institutional, participant, and community authorities may overlap or conflict and must be resolved locally."},"evidence_readiness":{"score":4,"rationale":"The packet provides separate problem and intervention falsifiers, a completed-study test setting, measurable comparison areas, excluded actions, halt conditions, and rollback. It does not yet define sampling, adjudication, or quantitative decision thresholds."},"safety_net_benefit":{"score":5,"rationale":"The composition directly adds safeguards against both unsafe retention and irreversible context loss: uncertainty blocks deletion, preservation exceptions precede disposition, source controls remain unchanged during the first test, and restoration is explicitly exercised."},"scalability":{"score":3,"rationale":"Reusable lifecycle states and review logic could transfer across repositories, but artifact-level classification, dependency resolution, contextual judgment, authority coordination, exception review, and restoration testing may remain labor-intensive and institution-specific."}},"score_confidence":"MODERATE","costs":{"first_evidence":{"band_2026_usd":"10K_TO_50K","scope":"Design and execute a read-only shadow pilot on a bounded sample from one completed study, including inventory, lifecycle classification, baseline-versus-proposed retrieval comparison, dependency tracing, interpretation review, exposure checks, dispute logging, and one authorized restore drill.","confidence":"MODERATE","assumptions":["The repository and backups already exist and are accessible under current authorization.","The sample is bounded rather than a full-corpus inventory.","No production access changes or deletion occur.","Researcher, steward, ethics or privacy review, and evaluation labor are included."]},"initial_deployment_startup":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Configure repository metadata and discovery views for one program or institution, establish lifecycle taxonomy and governance procedures, migrate priority artifacts, document authority paths, train users, and validate backup and restoration controls.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Existing repository software can be extended rather than replaced.","Deployment begins with selected active or high-risk collections.","Consent and policy interpretation require multidisciplinary review.","Complex integrations, extensive remediation, or bespoke community-governance processes could move costs upward."]},"operational_launch":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Launch the governed workflow across an initial portfolio, including classification and quality assurance, dependency review, exception adjudication, access and privacy testing, staff support, monitoring, and evaluation against baseline retrieval and reconstruction outcomes.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Launch covers multiple studies but not an enterprise-wide historical corpus.","Human review remains required for ambiguous context, consent, and authority.","No irreversible disposition is automated.","Existing storage, identity, and backup infrastructure remains usable."]},"annual_recurring":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Operate recurring review, revalidate exceptions and permissions, resolve new dependencies and disputes, maintain metadata and software, conduct restore tests, train staff, and audit governance outcomes for the initial portfolio.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["A dedicated fraction of data-steward, researcher, ethics or privacy, technical, and evaluation capacity is required.","Review cadence and corpus growth are moderate.","Sensitive or contested collections receive additional human review.","The sealed packet provides no corpus volume or institutional scale."]}},"research_burden":"HIGH","earliest_credible_horizon":"3_TO_12_MONTHS","pipeline_gates":{"recognizable_externally_supportable_problem":{"status":"YES","reason":"The candidate describes an externally recognizable governance problem involving obsolete interpretations, consent-incompatible material, repository burden, and loss of reconstructability, while appropriately leaving prevalence unproven."},"identifiable_adopter_or_authorizer":{"status":"YES","reason":"The accountable principal investigator and research-data steward are identifiable adopters, constrained by specified institutional and participant or community authorities."},"distinct_testable_incremental_claim":{"status":"YES","reason":"Against fixed project-level retention and archiving, the proposal claims that artifact-level lifecycle states, dependency review, supersession links, and revalidation will reduce stale retrieval and improve correct interpretation without worsening specified harms."},"bounded_next_evidence_step":{"status":"YES","reason":"One completed study and a bounded artifact sample support a read-only shadow classification, baseline comparison, dependency assessment, and restore drill with no access change or deletion."},"no_unresolved_safety_or_authority_stop":{"status":"YES","reason":"The proposed first step remains within existing controls, prohibits deletion and access changes, specifies authorized oversight, and has explicit halt and rollback conditions; unresolved authority or dependencies halt rather than expand the test."},"implementation_cost_scope_and_range":{"status":"YES","reason":"A bounded pilot and staged single-program deployment can be scoped, and broad resource-equivalent cost bands can be assigned despite substantial uncertainty about corpus size, integrations, and governance complexity."}},"blocking_evidence":["No evidence establishes how often users mistake obsolete artifacts for current evidence or the material burden caused by accumulated corpora.","No pilot evidence shows that lifecycle labels and dependency review improve retrieval or interpretation relative to current practice.","The completeness and reliability achievable for artifact identities, consent states, dependencies, and supersession relationships are unknown.","It is unknown whether the inventory or its metadata would create unauthorized exposure or leak the existence of sensitive material.","Local authority alignment among investigators, institutions, participants, and communities has not been demonstrated.","Prior art is unsearched, so distinctiveness from existing qualitative repository, provenance, preservation, consent-governance, and retention practices is unverified."],"next_evidence_step":"On one completed study, predefine a bounded and governance-approved artifact sample, then create a read-only shadow inventory and lifecycle classification. Compare blinded baseline search results with lifecycle-aware results for stale-artifact retrieval and correct contextual interpretation; measure dependency coverage, unauthorized exposure, disputes, and claim reconstruction, and conduct one authorized restore drill. Falsify advancement if labels do not improve retrieval or interpretation, or if they increase context loss, exposure, disputes, or reconstruction failure; make no access changes or deletions.","research_questions":["Across the bounded corpus, are currentness, consent, retention, dependency, and supersession states already inspectable, and do users actually confuse obsolete artifacts with current evidence?","Which artifact-level states can reviewers classify reliably without stripping relational context or falsely treating historical difference as staleness?","Do lifecycle-aware search results reduce stale-artifact retrieval and improve correct interpretation compared with the current repository view?","What proportion of material dependencies can be traced, and what uncertainty threshold must block restriction, archiving, or destruction?","Does a centralized inventory reveal sensitive identities, topics, relationships, or the existence of restricted material beyond current authorization?","How are conflicts among principal investigators, institutional authorities, participants, and community governance resolved for labeling, restriction, retention, and disposition?","Which older or apparently superseded artifacts remain authoritative or analytically valuable, and how should discordant cases be represented?","Can archived materials and their context be restored sufficiently to reconstruct active or published claims?","Which elements of the proposed composition are already present in qualitative data-management, repository preservation, provenance, consent, access-governance, or records-retention systems?"],"recommendation":"PRIOR_ART_RESEARCH","uncertainty_constraints":["Closed-book assessment: no external evidence was consulted.","Problem prevalence, stakeholder demand, realized impact, and market size are unmeasured.","Effectiveness is a hypothesis supported by a causal argument and falsifiers, not observed results.","Prior art and world novelty are unsearched and unverified.","Costs are broad resource-equivalent bands because corpus scale, repository architecture, policy burden, and governance complexity are unspecified.","Technical lifecycle state cannot independently determine the epistemic, ethical, or community value of a qualitative artifact.","Any later disposition decision remains subject to consent, ethics, law, institutional policy, dependencies, and recognized participant or community governance."],"closed_book_prior_art_boundary":"Prior art was not searched and remains unverified. This assessment supports only a closed-book judgment that the proposed composition is structurally distinct from the packet's stated nearest rival; it does not establish novelty, prevalence, or absence of equivalent existing practices."}