{"schema_version":1,"research_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp05_external_evaluation_20260803","source_assessment_id":"deadweight_loss_reduction__material_culture_museum_studies:P4:v0","cell_id":"deadweight_loss_reduction__material_culture_museum_studies","search_queries":["museum acquisition policy urgent acquisitions delegated authority collections committee temporary deposit accession offer deadline","museum accession backlog acquisition processing delays collections committee donor withdraw offer","Spectrum 5.1 object entry procedure temporary deposit acquisition due diligence museum","ICOM Code of Ethics acquisitions valid title due diligence collecting policy","site:si.edu museum collections policy delegated acquisition authority temporary custody accession 2024 pdf","site:.gov museum temporary custody acquisition accession policy collections committee delegated authority pdf","museum acquisition policy expedited urgent delegated director collections committee offer auction","museum acquisition approval parallel review provenance conservation legal workflow study"],"sources":[{"source_id":"S1","title":"CM Policy and Procedures: Acquisitions","publisher":"University of Colorado Boulder Art Museum","url":"https://www.colorado.edu/cuartmuseum/about/strategic-guiding-documents/collection-management-policy-and-procedures/cm-policy-and-3","source_class":"OFFICIAL_ORGANIZATION_DATA","publication_date":"n.d.","accessed_at":"2026-08-03","claims_supported":["Acquisitions ordinarily await quarterly Collection Committee meetings.","The museum permits canvassing the committee or calling a special meeting for urgent cases.","Objects delivered before review are recorded as insured loans with custody receipts.","Offers arriving after the last year-end meeting ordinarily cannot be considered before year end because of approval procedures.","Condition, storage, provenance, title, NAGPRA, and cultural consultation remain substantive safeguards."]},{"source_id":"S2","title":"Collections Management Policy","publisher":"The Walters Art Museum","url":"https://thewalters.org/about/policies/collections-management/","source_class":"OFFICIAL_ORGANIZATION_DATA","publication_date":"n.d.","accessed_at":"2026-08-03","claims_supported":["The Collections Committee normally meets only four to six times annually, although special meetings are possible.","The museum uses an exceptional fast-track process for time-constrained auction acquisitions.","Board-approved discretionary purchase limits and delegated year-end gift authority permit some decisions outside the ordinary calendar.","Acquisition review retains provenance, legal ownership, condition, authenticity, storage, conservation, and cost checks."]},{"source_id":"S3","title":"Art Acquisitions Policy","publisher":"Art Gallery of New South Wales","url":"https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/about-us/corporate-information/policy-documents/art-acquisitions-policy/","source_class":"GOVERNMENT_OR_REGULATOR","publication_date":"n.d.","accessed_at":"2026-08-03","claims_supported":["The Board-approved policy gives the director delegated acquisition authority within established limits.","A flying minute permits committee action outside the scheduled meeting cycle for qualifying acquisitions.","Delegated acquisitions are reported at the subsequent committee meeting.","Valid title, provenance, ethics, accountability, and direct and indirect costs remain required considerations."]},{"source_id":"S4","title":"Object Entry—Spectrum 5.0","publisher":"Collections Trust","url":"https://collectionstrust.org.uk/spectrum/procedures/object-entry-spectrum-5-0/","source_class":"STANDARD","publication_date":"2017-09","accessed_at":"2026-08-03","claims_supported":["Spectrum treats logging objects entering museum custody for loans, enquiries, and potential acquisitions as a primary procedure.","The procedure requires a receipt, terms governing responsibility, an identifying number, and immediate capture of key information.","The standard demonstrates that documented custody before an accession decision is an established collections-management capability."]},{"source_id":"S5","title":"Code of Ethics for Museums","publisher":"International Council of Museums","url":"https://icom.museum/en/resources/standards-guidelines/code-of-ethics/","source_class":"OFFICIAL_GUIDANCE","publication_date":"n.d.","accessed_at":"2026-08-03","claims_supported":["The ICOM Code establishes minimum professional standards for museums.","Its scope includes acquisition procedures, legal compliance, resource management, security, returns, restitution, due diligence, and provenance.","Procedural acceleration cannot properly displace these protected professional obligations."]},{"source_id":"S6","title":"Introducing the National Survey of Museum Collecting Practices","publisher":"American Alliance of Museums","url":"https://www.aam-us.org/2026/05/26/introducing-the-national-survey-of-museum-collecting-practices/","source_class":"OFFICIAL_ORGANIZATION_DATA","publication_date":"2026-05-26","accessed_at":"2026-08-03","claims_supported":["AAM describes provenance and cultural-property ownership as pressing field-wide issues affecting nearly every collecting decision.","The field lacks comprehensive data on acquisition decision structures, signoff, veto power, provenance staffing, and institutional capacity.","An IMLS-funded national survey is collecting acquisition, loan, deaccession, ownership-resolution, and governance data, demonstrating expressed demand for better evidence about collecting practices."]},{"source_id":"S7","title":"Acquisitions Policy","publisher":"National Museum of Ireland","url":"https://www.museum.ie/en-IE/About/Corporate-Information/Policies-Guidelines/Acquisitions-Policy","source_class":"GOVERNMENT_OR_REGULATOR","publication_date":"2024-10-03","accessed_at":"2026-08-03","claims_supported":["The museum's Board has statutory acquisition and borrowing authority.","Decision authority is tiered from routine acquisitions processed by curators to major acquisitions approved by the director.","Acquisition decisions must consider storage, conservation, staff time, fiscal implications, sustainability, provenance, ownership, permits, ethics, copyright, health and safety, and legal title.","Objects entering the museum receive identifiers and database audit trails."]},{"source_id":"S8","title":"Acquisitions Policy","publisher":"Spurlock Museum of World Cultures, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign","url":"https://www.spurlock.illinois.edu/about/policies/acquisitions.html","source_class":"OFFICIAL_ORGANIZATION_DATA","publication_date":"n.d.","accessed_at":"2026-08-03","claims_supported":["The museum exempts specified low-impact collection categories from full Acquisition Committee review while retaining the same acquisition criteria.","Designated staff directly determine whether exempt objects meet those criteria.","Criteria preserve collecting-plan fit, resource and storage capacity, condition, hazards, title, provenance, legal compliance, cultural restrictions, copyright, and donor-condition checks.","The policy demonstrates category-based routing and delegated responsibility as existing museum practice."]}],"problem_evidence":{"support":"MODERATE","rationale":"The proposed wedge is visible: official museum policies document quarterly or four-to-six-times-yearly committee calendars, offers that cannot be decided before year end, and exceptional procedures created specifically for urgent or time-constrained acquisitions. This establishes that calendar delay and custody-before-decision are real operational issues. However, none of the eight sources measures how often otherwise feasible offers are withdrawn, dispersed, or lost because of procedural waiting, so prevalence, causal incidence, and magnitude remain unverified.","source_ids":["S1","S2","S4"]},"stakeholder_evidence":{"support":"MODERATE","rationale":"Several identifiable museums and their boards or directors have adopted delegated, exempt, special-meeting, flying-minute, or temporary-custody pathways, which is revealed organizational demand for timely differentiated processing. AAM and an IMLS-funded survey also express a need for better evidence about acquisition authority, vetoes, provenance capacity, and governance. No institution is identified as requesting this exact one-year, 20-case pilot, and no donor or source-community evidence establishes demand for it.","source_ids":["S1","S2","S3","S6","S7","S8"]},"prior_art":{"proximity":"ESTABLISHED_PRACTICE","closest_analogues":[{"name":"Quarterly review with insured-loan custody and urgent committee action","similarity":"Colorado's museum receives proposed acquisitions into documented loan custody before quarterly review and allows committee canvassing or a special meeting for urgent cases.","remaining_difference":"It does not describe a one-year case-capped experiment, parallel independent reviews, a weekly low-risk panel, or a 60-day sunset deposit category; a special meeting may also solve many deadline cases more simply.","source_ids":["S1"]},{"name":"Exceptional fast track plus standing delegated authority","similarity":"The Walters uses an exceptional fast track for time-constrained acquisitions, discretionary executive authority, and delegated acceptance of year-end gifts while retaining substantive review.","remaining_difference":"The policy does not publish the proposal's low-risk classification rule, parallel workflow, 20-case boundary, monitoring design, or temporary-deposit limit.","source_ids":["S2"]},{"name":"Director delegation and out-of-cycle flying minutes","similarity":"The Art Gallery of New South Wales routes acquisitions by delegated limits and permits decisions outside the normal meeting cycle, followed by later reporting.","remaining_difference":"Routing is principally authority- or value-based rather than the proposed multi-domain low-risk test, and no experimental sunset or custody bridge is specified.","source_ids":["S3"]},{"name":"Spectrum object-entry custody controls","similarity":"Spectrum already standardizes documented museum custody of potential acquisitions before an ownership decision through receipts, terms, identifiers, and immediate records.","remaining_difference":"It governs accountable object entry, not delegated accession authority, risk triage, parallel review, comparative evaluation, or pilot renewal.","source_ids":["S4"]},{"name":"Category exemptions from full acquisition review","similarity":"Spurlock exempts defined categories from committee review and delegates responsibility while retaining common acquisition criteria, closely resembling tiered routing.","remaining_difference":"Its exemptions concern collection category and resource impact rather than time-bounded offers, and the pathway is standing policy rather than a monitored, expiring pilot.","source_ids":["S8"]}],"distinctive_claim_remaining":"For externally time-bounded offers that independently satisfy preapproved low-risk criteria, the combined use of one intake record, parallel independent reviews, a weekly delegated panel, and a maximum 60-day nonownership deposit will preserve more authorized decision opportunities and reduce procedural waiting than both the ordinary committee pathway and simpler urgent-meeting or out-of-cycle-vote alternatives, without increasing unresolved protected-gate approvals, custody failures, specialist workload, inequitable access, or unsustainable care obligations.","confidence":"HIGH"},"implementation_evidence":{"support":"STRONG","rationale":"Every major operational building block is already demonstrated in official museum practice: temporary documented custody, delegated authority, category-based review exemptions, urgent special meetings, out-of-cycle votes, later ratification or reporting, formal acquisition criteria, audit trails, and retained provenance, title, cultural, safety, storage, and care checks. Implementation is primarily governance and workflow configuration rather than novel technology. The exact bundled pilot and its performance remain untested, and the governing instrument, contract, insurance, cultural-authority process, and applicable law must be reviewed locally.","source_ids":["S1","S2","S3","S4","S5","S7","S8"]},"scores":{"meaningful_impact":{"score":3,"rationale":"Preventing loss of an irreplaceable object and its context could be consequential, but no source establishes the frequency of procedurally lost feasible offers or the net value after perpetual-care costs.","source_ids":["S1","S2","S7"]},"stakeholder_pull":{"score":3,"rationale":"Multiple museums have adopted adjacent urgent, delegated, or exempt pathways, and AAM reports demand for governance evidence; pull for this exact pilot is not demonstrated.","source_ids":["S1","S2","S3","S6","S8"]},"incremental_advantage":{"score":2,"rationale":"The bundle could outperform serial review, but existing special meetings, electronic canvassing, flying minutes, standing delegation, and documented predecision custody may capture much of the benefit with less redesign. Comparative advantage requires institutional records or testing.","source_ids":["S1","S2","S3","S4"]},"distinctiveness_plausibility":{"score":2,"rationale":"Risk/category differentiation, delegated decisions, urgent processing, and temporary custody are established practices. Distinctiveness is limited to the tightly bounded combination, comparator design, protected-outcome monitoring, and sunset.","source_ids":["S1","S2","S3","S4","S8"]},"technical_implementability":{"score":4,"rationale":"A shared intake, event log, routing rules, custody form, and audit trail are straightforward with ordinary collections systems; the harder work is policy configuration, reviewer coordination, and reliable classification rather than new technology.","source_ids":["S4","S7","S8"]},"adoption_authority_feasibility":{"score":4,"rationale":"Official policies identify boards, trustees, directors, registrars, curators, and committees that can authorize or operate differentiated pathways. Authority is institution-specific and may be constrained by statute, bylaws, insurance, or cultural obligations.","source_ids":["S1","S2","S3","S7","S8"]},"evidence_readiness":{"score":3,"rationale":"The proposed 24-case audit has clear records, comparators, and falsifiers, but the required timing, withdrawal, staff-effort, and decision files are proprietary institutional records not available through bounded web research.","source_ids":["S6","S7"]},"safety_net_benefit":{"score":4,"rationale":"The proposed exclusions, retained specialist vetoes, nonownership deposit, case cap, sunset, monitoring, and rollback directly protect against title, provenance, cultural-authority, hazard, storage, and de facto-accession failures, consistent with professional standards.","source_ids":["S1","S4","S5","S7","S8"]},"scalability":{"score":3,"rationale":"The workflow pattern is portable and already appears in varied museums, but risk definitions, authority, cultural obligations, law, insurance, staffing, and collection sensitivity require local configuration.","source_ids":["S1","S2","S3","S7","S8"]}},"score_confidence":"MODERATE","costs":{"first_evidence":{"band_2026_usd":"10K_TO_50K","scope":"Retrospective audit and paper simulation of 24 offers, including event-log reconstruction, independent review by five relevant functions, disagreement adjudication, analysis, and a decision report.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Approximately 350-500 loaded staff hours across coordination, records extraction, five-function paper review, analysis, and governance reporting.","Blended 2026 resource-equivalent labor of roughly $60-$100 per hour.","Records exist in usable form; extensive archival reconstruction, external provenance research, object examination, and new legal opinions are excluded."],"source_ids":["S1","S6","S7","S8"]},"initial_deployment_startup":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Design and approval of eligibility rules, delegation, temporary-deposit agreement, insurance and custody controls, intake and audit fields, training, equity assistance, monitoring triggers, and rollback procedures.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Approximately 500-1,200 internal and specialist hours plus limited outside legal, insurance, workflow, and collections-system configuration support.","No new storage facility, major software purchase, acquisition fund, or conservation treatment is included.","Local law, bylaws, insurer requirements, or labor agreements could move the cost outside this band."],"source_ids":["S2","S3","S4","S5","S7","S8"]},"operational_launch":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Operate the one-year, maximum-20-case pilot: intake coordination, parallel specialist review, weekly panel time, temporary custody handling, storage and insurance, community liaison, monitoring, and final evaluation.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Approximately 800-1,800 incremental loaded staff hours across 20 cases and governance review.","Only short-term, low-risk custody is included; transport, major conservation, purchases, and permanent storage expansion remain case costs outside the pilot.","No serious custody incident, litigation, contested title matter, or hazardous-material response occurs."],"source_ids":["S1","S2","S4","S7","S8"]},"annual_recurring":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Annual operation after renewal for a similar low-volume pathway, including coordination, specialist participation, training refresh, custody administration, audit, and periodic policy review.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Twenty to fifty qualifying or screened offers annually.","Existing staff, storage, collections system, legal framework, and insurer can absorb most infrastructure needs.","Acquisition prices, perpetual conservation and storage obligations, major cultural consultation, and complex provenance investigations remain attributable to individual acquisition decisions rather than this pathway."],"source_ids":["S2","S3","S7","S8"]}},"verified_pipeline_gates":{"externally_supported_problem":{"status":"UNCERTAIN","reason":"Calendar waits, urgent exceptions, and temporary predecision custody visibly exist, but externally available evidence does not show that otherwise feasible acquisitions are actually being lost because of those waits or quantify the incidence.","source_ids":["S1","S2","S4"]},"externally_credible_adopter_or_authorizer":{"status":"YES","reason":"Museum boards, trustees, directors, collections committees, registrars, and curators demonstrably authorize and operate closely analogous delegated, exempt, urgent, and custody pathways.","source_ids":["S1","S2","S3","S7","S8"]},"distinct_testable_incremental_claim":{"status":"YES","reason":"The claim compares the bundled pathway against ordinary review and simpler urgent-action alternatives on deadline preservation, procedural wait, protected-gate failures, workload, equity, custody, and care burdens.","source_ids":["S1","S2","S3","S4","S8"]},"bounded_next_evidence_step":{"status":"YES","reason":"A retrospective review of 24 cases in one collecting area changes no acquisition decision and can be completed with specified records, reviewers, comparators, outcomes, and falsifiers.","source_ids":["S1","S6","S7","S8"]},"no_unresolved_safety_or_authority_stop":{"status":"YES","reason":"The immediate evidence step is records-only and requires no custody or ownership change. Any live pilot remains conditional on governing-body authorization, local legal and insurance review, retained specialist and cultural-authority powers, and approved agreements.","source_ids":["S2","S3","S4","S5","S7","S8"]},"credible_cost_scope_and_range":{"status":"UNCERTAIN","reason":"The four ranges have bounded scopes and transparent labor assumptions, but no institution-specific wage, records-quality, insurance, legal, storage, workload, or case-complexity data were available to validate them.","source_ids":["S1","S7","S8"]}},"next_evidence_step":"With one museum partner, preregister and complete a records-only review of the most recent 24 completed, withdrawn, declined, or expired offers in one collecting area. Reconstruct deadline, intake, active-review, interstage-wait, repeat-request, committee-date, storage-readiness, withdrawal, decision, and staff-hour events. Have curatorial, registration, conservation, provenance/legal, and source-community-liaison reviewers independently classify each case before seeing its outcome. Simulate four comparators: ordinary calendar review; ordinary review plus one special meeting or electronic vote; documented temporary custody without delegated review; and the proposed combined pathway. Primary outcome: number of otherwise feasible cases receiving an authorized decision before a documented external deadline. Secondary outcomes: procedural-wait days, active-review hours, repeated requests, temporary-custody days and costs, specialist queue load, classification agreement, protected-gate exceptions, distributional access, and projected perpetual-care burden. Falsify the problem if no otherwise feasible offer was lost or endangered primarily by procedural waiting or lack of lawful custody. Falsify incremental advantage if a special meeting/electronic vote or custody-only comparator performs as well, if reviewers cannot reliably identify eligible cases, if parallelization only relocates delay to specialist queues, or if any apparent gain depends on weakening title, provenance, cultural-authority, hazard, storage, privacy, donor-condition, or care-capacity safeguards.","blocking_evidence":["Institutional prevalence of otherwise feasible offers withdrawn, dispersed, or endangered specifically because of procedural waiting or unavailable lawful custody.","Case-level separation of active substantive review time from serial routing, duplicated requests, and committee-calendar waiting.","Independent reviewer agreement and false-clearance rates under the proposed low-risk criteria.","Comparative performance against simpler special-meeting, electronic-vote, and custody-only alternatives.","Institution-specific staff capacity, queue effects, insurance, handling, short-term storage, legal, and governance costs.","Local legal, bylaw, insurer, title-transfer, abandoned-property, cultural-authority, and temporary-custody review before any live pilot.","Distributional evidence on whether community custodians with oral or nonstandard documentation can access the pathway without reduced scrutiny.","Evidence that preserved decision opportunities create net value after conservation, storage, documentation, and perpetual-care obligations."],"research_disposition":"PARTNERED_RESEARCH_PROGRAM","world_novelty_boundary":"The search establishes only that delegated acquisition authority, out-of-cycle decisions, urgent fast tracks, category-based review exemptions, and documented preaccession custody are established practices. It did not exhaustively search every museum, jurisdiction, publication, product, patent, or unpublished workflow. World novelty, patentability, freedom to operate, market size, and realized impact remain unmeasured.","arm":"COMPLETE_PROPOSAL_PORTFOLIO","candidate_version":0,"controller_recommendation":{"action":"STOP_EMPIRICAL_RESEARCH_NEEDED","repairable":false,"material_progress_observed":true,"progress_targets":["Secure a museum partner and authorized access to the specified 24-case acquisition records without changing prior decisions.","Complete case-level event logs that distinguish substantive work from routing and calendar delay and document every missing field.","Obtain blinded independent classifications from all five protected-review functions and report agreement, disagreements, false-clearance risks, and adjudications.","Compare the proposal with ordinary review, special-meeting or electronic-vote review, and custody-only alternatives using the preregistered outcomes and falsifiers.","Produce an institution-specific workload, insurance, legal, storage, and governance cost model with sensitivity analysis.","Obtain governing-body, legal, insurance, registrar, conservation, provenance, and applicable cultural-authority approval before any live delegated decision or temporary deposit.","Stop diffusion if the audit finds no procedural-delay-caused lost opportunity, no advantage over simpler comparators, unreliable eligibility classification, displaced specialist queues, or unacceptable protected-interest risk."],"reason":"Bounded web research confirms the workflow problem type, credible authorizers, safeguards, and extensive prior art, but cannot establish the candidate's core causal premise or incremental benefit. Those questions require proprietary case records, expert paper classification, institution-specific authority review, and potentially live testing. Under the required controller rule, this is an empirical-research stop and therefore repairable is false."},"proposal_index":4}