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Role Reclassification Review

Periodic review — instantiates Source–Sink Viability Management

A standing review that watches for role-change triggers and, on a set cadence, formally re-labels any unit whose source or sink status has shifted — so the classification the whole system trusts never silently goes stale.

The Role Reclassification Review is the periodic ritual that keeps the archetype's classification true over time. Roles are not permanent — a source can deplete into a sink, a sink can recover into a neutral or a source, a shock or a restoration can flip a unit — and the Review is the standing process that watches for those switches and, on a defined cadence, formally moves a unit from one class to another. Its distinguishing feature is that it operates on transitions, not levels: it does not measure net balance or dependence itself (the map and dashboards do that), it decides when a change of role has become real enough to act on and re-labels accordingly, so support and guardrails follow each unit's current reality rather than its historical tag.

Example

A university classifies its academic departments by whether tuition and grant revenue cover their fully-loaded cost — sources subsidise sinks, and the subsidy is deliberate, since some low-enrolment departments are mission-critical. Two years ago a professional-masters programme was a reliable source. The Role Reclassification Review, run each budget cycle, watches a small set of triggers: two consecutive years of enrolment decline, a dean's flag, a step-change in the discount rate. This cycle the programme trips two at once. The Review convenes, confirms the net-balance measurement has genuinely turned (not a one-year dip), and reclassifies it from source to role-switching → provisional sink, noting that its subsidy status and guardrails must now be reconsidered. Symmetrically it upgrades a once-struggling department that has climbed back to break-even. The Review changes the labels; it does not itself decide the subsidy — it hands the newly-reclassified units to the budgeting and taper mechanisms.

How it works

  • Trigger watch between reviews. A small, explicit set of role-switch triggers (a sustained net-balance sign change, a shock, a restoration milestone, a manual flag) is monitored continuously, so a switch is caught when it happens, not only at the calendar review.
  • Cadence with confirmation. On a set cadence the Review convenes, confirms a candidate switch is durable rather than a transient blip, and only then re-labels — the confirmation step is what stops the classification thrashing on noise.
  • Symmetric and hysteresis-aware. It upgrades recoveries as readily as it downgrades depletions, and it deliberately demands more evidence to switch a role back and forth than to hold it, damping oscillation.

It maintains the classification; it does not own the base map or make the support decision.

Tuning parameters

  • Cadence — how often the formal review runs; frequent reviews track reality closely but cost attention and risk over-reacting to noise.
  • Trigger sensitivity — how strong a signal counts as a candidate switch; sensitive triggers catch reversals early but raise false alarms.
  • Confirmation bar / hysteresis — how much durable evidence a re-label requires, and how much more to switch back than to hold; a high bar prevents thrashing but lags true reversals.
  • Scope per cycle — review every unit, or only those that tripped a trigger; full sweeps catch slow drift, triggered-only reviews are cheaper but miss the un-flagged.
  • Authority — whether the Review re-labels directly or only recommends; direct re-labelling is faster, recommendation adds a governance check.

When it helps, and when it misleads

Its strength is preventing the quiet, expensive error of acting on a stale map — subsidising a department that has recovered, or still treating a depleted source as an inexhaustible well — by making reclassification a scheduled, evidence-gated event rather than something nobody gets around to. It also resists the opposite error, thrashing, through its confirmation bar. Its failure modes sit at the extremes: too sensitive and it churns labels on noise, destabilising every downstream decision; too conservative and it becomes a rubber stamp that ratifies whatever the map already said. The classic misuse is motivated reclassification — re-labelling a unit not because its balance changed but because someone wants the budget consequence the new label unlocks. It can also mistake a temporary shock for a durable regime shift, or miss a real one.[1] The discipline is to tie every re-label to a confirmed, dated change in the underlying measurement, and to fix the trigger set and confirmation bar in advance so labels cannot be moved to order.

How it implements the components

The Role Reclassification Review fills the change-detection and revisitation components — the machinery that keeps the classification current — and only those:

  • role_switch_monitor — it watches the explicit trigger set for signs a unit has changed role between reviews.
  • feedback_review_cadence — it sets and runs the cadence at which classifications are formally revisited and re-labelled.

It does NOT hold the base classification it revises — that lives on the Source–Sink Patch Map — and it does NOT produce the net-balance and dependence measurements it reacts to, which come from the Source Depletion Dashboard and Sink Dependency Dashboard.

Notes

The Review asks has this unit's role changed? on a cadence; the Rescue-Effect Audit asks a sharper, one-off question — is this unit's apparent persistence real recovery, or only the rescue effect masking an unchanged sink? A Review can be fooled by rescue into "upgrading" a sink that is merely being propped harder; that is exactly when it should call a Rescue-Effect Audit rather than re-label on the surface reading.

References

[1] A regime shift is a large, persistent reorganisation of a system into a new stable state; when a unit undergoes one, its source/sink role can flip durably — which is precisely the change a reclassification review exists to catch, and the transient disturbance it must be careful not to mistake for one. ↩