{"closest_prior_art":[{"name":"ACUS Recommendation 2023-7: Improving Timeliness in Agency Adjudication","overlap":"Recommends tracking proceedings pending, commenced, and concluded by reporting period; monitoring status and processing age across adjudication levels; adopting timeliness goals; aligning staffing and task allocation; using evidence-based plans and pilots; and protecting decisional quality, fairness, and integrity.","remaining_difference":"It does not prescribe a reconciled opening-to-closing stock equation, capacity-normalized warning band, consecutive-trigger activation, sustained in-band retirement rule, or explicit coupled-stock checks for remands, reconsideration, transfers, and reopenings.","source_ids":["SRC1"]},{"name":"GAO review of Social Security disability-appeal backlogs","overlap":"Documents pending and aged appeal inventories, target-pending concepts, ALJ and support-staff capacity levers, staffing learning curves, workload transfers, remands, feedback monitoring, and the risk that poorly executed reforms can worsen backlog.","remaining_difference":"The reviewed practices are program-specific backlog initiatives rather than a prospective rule binding reconciled stock and aging thresholds to predefined reversible activation and retirement actions while monitoring displacement across procedural stocks.","source_ids":["SRC2"]},{"name":"NCSC court performance measurement and CourTools","overlap":"Treats time to disposition and age of the active pending caseload as core measures, establishes performance benchmarks, and connects measurement and case-management policies to delay reduction.","remaining_difference":"It is a measurement and caseflow framework, not the proposed licensing-appeal feedback rule with flow reconciliation, unexplained residuals, capacity-normalized bands, coupled stocks, and automatic escalation and retirement conditions.","source_ids":["SRC3"]},{"name":"Seattle Office of Hearing Examiner annual caseload reporting","overlap":"The official report tabulates pending appeals at the start and end of the year, filings, total caseload, hearings, decisions, dismissals, and defaults by jurisdiction, including licensing appeals.","remaining_difference":"It demonstrates stock-and-flow reporting for licensing appeals but not weekly aging buckets, residual reconciliation, threshold-linked reserve capacity, upstream decision-quality correction, coupled-stock monitoring, or a retirement rule.","source_ids":["SRC4"]}],"contrastive_claim_falsifier":"The contrastive claim would be falsified by locating an earlier licensing-appeal policy or operating manual that reconciles opening and closing unresolved stock across reopenings, remands, reconsideration, and transfers and binds capacity-normalized stock or age thresholds to predefined reversible activation and sustained-recovery retirement rules; operationally, it would also fail if the bounded replay showed no earlier useful trigger or only displaced pendency into coupled stocks.","contrastive_claim_remaining":"Conditional on a persistent, reconcilable licensing-appeal stock, the remaining distinction is a closed-loop rule that combines weekly stock-flow and aging reconciliation, residual and coupled-stock checks, capacity-normalized warning bands, consecutive observations, authorized reversible capacity or upstream-quality actions, and a sustained in-band retirement condition without restricting appeal access or adjudicator independence.","experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp13_second_slot_policy60_20260806","gates":{"adequate_source_search":{"rationale":"The bounded search covered the proposal directly, backlog and pendency synonyms, older caseflow terminology, administrative-adjudication guidance, court performance practices, licensing-appeal reports, and combinations involving inventories, aging, staffing, remands, and reconsideration. Four opened sources from four publishers were retained, including multiple official or primary sources. No exact phrase match was treated as novelty evidence.","source_ids":["SRC1","SRC2","SRC3","SRC4"],"status":"PASS"},"bounded_next_test":{"rationale":"A read-only reconstruction of one appeal class, capped at four analyst-weeks or 500 records, can test stock persistence, reconciliation residuals, aging excursions, trigger timing, and displacement without changing case handling. ACUS recommends collecting pending, commenced, concluded, status, and age data and considering pilots; GAO demonstrates that these variables and intervention effects can be evaluated from administrative records.","source_ids":["SRC1","SRC2"],"status":"PASS"},"distinct_testable_claim":{"rationale":"Prior art establishes most component practices, but the proposed conjunction remains falsifiable: a replay can determine whether its reconciled, capacity-normalized, coupled-stock trigger-and-retirement rule would signal materially earlier and improve projected stock trajectory relative to existing practice.","source_ids":["SRC1","SRC2","SRC3","SRC4"],"status":"PASS"},"no_obvious_safety_or_authority_stop":{"rationale":"The authorized first step is retrospective and read-only, while adoption and resource allocation remain with legally designated officials and merits remain with adjudicators. The proposed safeguards align with official guidance requiring timeliness measures not to distort outcomes or impair quality, fairness, integrity, confidentiality, and adjudicator flexibility. No obvious stop applies to the bounded reconstruction, though any later operational pilot requires legal and budget authorization.","source_ids":["SRC1","SRC2","SRC4"],"status":"PASS"},"supported_problem":{"rationale":"Official guidance recognizes that pending volume, resources, and process design cause agency-adjudication delay and recommends measuring pending, commenced, concluded, status, and age across levels. GAO documents accumulated and aged administrative-appeal inventories and capacity constraints, while Seattle reports opening and closing licensing-appeal stocks. Evidence supports the general accumulation problem and its presence in licensing-appeal reporting, but does not directly establish the proposal's claimed coding inconsistencies or silent backlog in a particular state program.","source_ids":["SRC1","SRC2","SRC4"],"status":"PASS"}},"prior_art_disposition":"ADJACENT_PRIOR_ART","problem_evidence":{"finding":"The problem class is visible: administrative adjudication can accumulate pending and aged appeal inventories when capacity and process performance are inadequate, and official licensing-appeal reporting already distinguishes opening stock, filings, dispositions, and closing stock. The stronger assertion that reopenings, remands, reconsideration conversions, and transfers are inconsistently represented in a specific state licensing docket was not directly demonstrated by the retained sources.","source_ids":["SRC1","SRC2","SRC4"],"status":"PARTLY_SUPPORTED"},"research_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp13_light_screen_20260806","schema_version":1,"screen_id":"E13P030","screen_survival":true,"search_lanes":{"component_combination":{"no_result_note":"No retained source disclosed the full combination of reconciled weekly licensing-appeal stock, capacity-normalized thresholds, reversible activation and retirement, and coupled-stock displacement checks.","queries":["administrative appeals backlog pending caseload clearance rate age of pending cases licensing agency","licensing appeals backlog remand reconsideration reopened cases docket","administrative hearings docket backlog surge staffing adjudicators appeals","administrative adjudication backlog pending cases age clearance rate"],"source_ids":["SRC1","SRC2","SRC3","SRC4"]},"direct_problem_and_intervention":{"no_result_note":"Direct searches found adjacent adjudication-timeliness and licensing-appeal inventory practices, but no exact licensing-appeal pendency balance rule.","queries":["licensing appeal pendency balance rule","state professional licensing appeals pending cases backlog annual report administrative hearings","site:gov licensing appeals pending cases administrative hearings"],"source_ids":["SRC1","SRC4"]},"products_practices_and_standards":{"no_result_note":null,"queries":["court caseflow management backlog clearance rate age pending caseload time standards","site:ncsc.org CourTools clearance rate age of active pending caseload backlog index official","site:gao.gov administrative appeals backlog staffing pending inventory age cases agency adjudication"],"source_ids":["SRC1","SRC2","SRC3"]},"synonyms_and_historical_terms":{"no_result_note":null,"queries":["appeals backlog inventory aged cases target pending caseload","caseflow management pending workload backlog index disposition rate","hearing office claims backlog target pending administrative law judges"],"source_ids":["SRC2","SRC3","SRC4"]}},"sources":[{"claims_supported":["Administrative-adjudication delay and backlog are recognized problems affecting licensing and other proceedings.","Agencies should track pending, commenced, and concluded proceedings, current status, and processing age across adjudication levels.","Agencies should establish reasonable timeliness goals, align personnel and tasks, use evidence-based planning and pilots, and protect decisional quality, fairness, integrity, and adjudicator independence."],"publisher":"Administrative Conference of the United States / Office of the Federal Register","source_id":"SRC1","source_type":"OFFICIAL_GUIDANCE","title":"Adoption of Recommendations: Administrative Conference Recommendation 2023-7, Improving Timeliness in Agency Adjudication","url":"https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/01/10/2024-00302/adoption-of-recommendations"},{"claims_supported":["SSA measured pending appeal claims and processing time and used aged-case and target-pending concepts.","ALJ and support-staff capacity, learning curves, workload transfers, and remands materially affect appeal backlog trajectories.","Some prior process reforms worsened backlog, supporting monitoring and evaluation of interventions and unintended effects."],"publisher":"U.S. Government Accountability Office","source_id":"SRC2","source_type":"PRIMARY_RESEARCH","title":"Social Security Disability: Better Planning, Management, and Evaluation Could Help Address Backlogs (GAO-08-40)","url":"https://www.gao.gov/assets/a269972.html"},{"claims_supported":["Time to disposition and age of the active pending caseload are established court performance measures.","Performance baselines, benchmarks, and case-management policies are used to identify and reduce delay."],"publisher":"National Center for State Courts","source_id":"SRC3","source_type":"TRADE_PROFESSIONAL","title":"Performance Measurement","url":"https://www.ncsc.org/performance-measurement"},{"claims_supported":["An independent municipal administrative-hearing office reports opening pending appeals, filings, total caseload, hearings, decisions, dismissals, defaults, and closing pending appeals by jurisdiction.","Licensing appeals are a separately reported appeal class, demonstrating direct stock-and-flow reporting in the proposal's domain."],"publisher":"City of Seattle Office of Hearing Examiner","source_id":"SRC4","source_type":"FIRST_PARTY_PRODUCT","title":"Office of Hearing Examiner 2022–2023 Annual Report","url":"https://www.seattle.gov/documents/departments/hearingexaminer/annual%20reports/2022-2023%20annual%20report%20final.pdf"}],"world_novelty_boundary":"This coarse, bounded public-web screen supports only an adjacent-prior-art disposition. It cannot establish world novelty, patentability, market size, expert acceptance, implementation feasibility across jurisdictions, or realized value; unindexed policies, internal operating manuals, procurement documents, other languages, and patent literature may contain closer matches."}