THE 100 ARCHIVE PROJECT

Purpose — What the Index Measures and Why

The governance question Nigerian analysis has never systematically answered

1.1  The Question

Nigerian governance analysis is rich in documentation of what went wrong. It is almost entirely silent on a second question that is more diagnostic: when something went wrong, how did the system respond?

A country with many serious failures and strong accountability responses is a democracy under stress — institutions are being tested and they are working. A country with moderate failures and near-zero accountability responses is a democracy in structural decline — the failures are not the primary problem; the system's inability to hold itself accountable is. These two countries look identical if you measure only events. They look very different if you measure the gap between the severity of events and the quality of the response.

That gap is the Accountability Deficit. The Index exists to measure it, case by case, institution by institution, sector by sector, year by year.

1.2  Why This Has Not Been Done Before

Existing governance indices — Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index, the Ibrahim Index of African Governance, the World Bank's Governance Indicators — share a structural limitation: they measure perceptions or aggregate statistics, not documented incidents with evidence trails. They tell you something is bad. They cannot tell you exactly where the accountability system broke down, or which institutions within the same country perform better or worse.

The Archive's Index is different in two ways. First, every score is anchored to a specific documented case with a primary source evidence trail — not to a survey of expert perceptions. Second, the Index measures the response to each event separately from the severity of the event, producing a diagnostic decomposition that perception-based indices cannot generate.

This is the methodological contribution the governance field has needed: an incident-based, evidence-grounded, publicly auditable accountability index. It will take longer to build than a perception index. It will be harder to produce. It will be more credible and more useful.

1.3  What the Index Is Not

• A corruption measure — corruption is one cause of accountability failure, not its synonym
• A ranking of Nigerian states or institutions by goodness or badness — it is a diagnostic tool, not a league table
• A tool for political attack — entries that produce high accountability deficits must pass the same four-stage editorial review as all Archive entries
• A real-time monitoring system — scores are assigned at publication and updated as cases evolve; they reflect documented evidence, not live tracking

The Three-Instrument Framework

How the Index relates to the CIS and the Case Qualification Threshold

2.1  Three Instruments, Three Jobs

The Archive uses three scoring instruments. Each operates at a different moment in the case lifecycle and answers a different question. None replaces the others.

The CIS and the Accountability Index are sometimes confused because both are numerical scores applied to Archive cases. The difference is fundamental: the CIS measures the civic importance of the event at the moment it enters the Archive. The Accountability Index measures the system's accountability performance in response to that event, which takes shape over months and years as investigations are opened, findings released, prosecutions commenced or abandoned, and reforms enacted or shelved.

2.2  Why the Index Is Applied at Publication, Not at Intake

A case that enters the Archive in January may have a complete Impact Score at intake — the harm occurred, its scale is documentable. But the Accountability Score cannot be complete at intake because accountability responses take time. The investigation has not yet been opened. The EFCC has not yet acted. The National Assembly committee has not yet reported.

Applying the Accountability Score at intake would produce systematically distorted data: recent cases would always show high accountability deficits simply because not enough time has elapsed for accountability responses to occur. Historical cases would show lower deficits because some accountability responses have already occurred, even if inadequate. Applying the Index at publication — after the right-of-reply process and after the case has been fully researched — and then updating it as cases evolve, removes this temporal distortion.

The Two-Part Structure — Impact and Accountability

3.1  The Fundamental Distinction

Every case produces two scores that are calculated separately, reported separately, and then combined to produce the Accountability Deficit.

= ACCOUNTABILITY DEFICIT  (Impact Score − Accountability Score)

3.2  Why Separate Reporting Matters

The deficit score tells you that accountability failed. The separate scores tell you why. An Impact Score of 22 with an Accountability Score of 2 tells a different story from an Impact Score of 10 with an Accountability Score of 0 — even if both produce a deficit of 20. The first is a catastrophic event with minimal response. The second is a moderate event the system entirely ignored. These require different policy responses and tell different stories about institutional behaviour.

The separate scores also enable the most important analysis the Index can produce: within the Accountability Score, which dimension consistently fails? If ten cases in the Procurement sector all score well on Investigation and zero on Consequences, the diagnosis is precise — procurement failures are investigated, and then nothing happens. That is not a problem of investigation capacity. It is a problem of political will to prosecute. Separate dimension reporting makes that visible. A single aggregate score cannot.

The Impact Score — Five Dimensions

Measuring how serious the event was

4.1  Overview

The Impact Score has five dimensions, each scored 0–5. Maximum possible Impact Score: 25. The score is assigned by the Research Director at the time of publication and confirmed by the Editorial Lead. All scores must be anchored to a specific primary source cited in the Research File.

Dimension 1 — Human Impact  (0–5)

Measures the direct physical, health, or livelihood harm to people caused by the documented failure.

Dimension 2 — Financial Impact  (0–5)

Measures the documented loss of public funds, economic damage to public resources, or value of public goods denied.

Dimension 3 — Institutional Impact  (0–5)

Measures how deeply the event damages the functional capacity or structural integrity of public institutions — independent of its human or financial cost.

Dimension 4 — Democratic Impact  (0–5)

Measures the damage the event causes to democratic norms, processes, and rights — the accountability mechanisms that citizens use to exercise oversight over government.

Dimension 5 — Public Trust Impact  (0–5)

Measures the event's damage to citizen confidence in state institutions, assessed by the nature of the institution involved and the type of violation. This dimension is unique: trust damage is often disproportionate to financial or human impact. A judicial corruption finding of modest scale may do more trust damage than a large procurement failure because it strikes at the institution citizens depend on to hold other institutions accountable.

The Accountability Score — Five Dimensions

Measuring how well the system responded

5.1  Overview

The Accountability Score has five dimensions, each scored 0–5. Maximum possible Accountability Score: 25. The score is assigned at publication. It is the only score in the Index that is routinely updated as cases evolve — because accountability responses unfold over time. All scores must be anchored to primary source evidence of documented institutional action or inaction.

Dimension A1 — Investigation  (0–5)

Measures whether and how seriously the relevant institution investigated the documented failure.

Dimension A2 — Transparency  (0–5)

Measures whether findings, evidence, and accountability processes were made available to the public.

Dimension A3 — Consequences  (0–5)

Measures whether identified responsible parties faced documented consequences proportionate to the severity of the failure.

Dimension A4 — Institutional Reform  (0–5)

Measures whether the documented failure led to documented changes in policy, law, institutional practice, or structural design that reduce the likelihood of recurrence.

Dimension A5 — Time to Response  (0–5)

Measures the timeliness of accountability responses across all stages of the process. Unlike the other four dimensions, this dimension is not a single score — it is an average of the timeliness at each stage where an accountability response occurred.

The Time to Response score is the weighted average of applicable stage scores, rounded to one decimal place. Stages that did not occur (because no investigation was opened, or because no consequences were enacted) are scored 0 and are weighted in the average. This means an accountability process that opened an investigation but never prosecuted anyone does not score well on Time to Response simply because the investigation was fast.

The Accountability Deficit Formula

6.1  The Formula

The Accountability Deficit is the primary output of the Index for each case. It is calculated as follows:

6.2  Interpreting the Deficit Score

6.3  The Zero-Impact Rule

Where a case is documented primarily for its positive precedent value — a functioning accountability mechanism, a proactive audit, a successful prosecution initiated by the institution itself before harm occurred — the Impact Score may legitimately be 0 or very low. In such cases, the Accountability Score exceeds the Impact Score, producing a negative deficit (accountability surplus).

These cases are valuable and are published. They demonstrate that accountability can work. But they are reported separately in the Annual Index Report under the heading 'Positive Accountability Precedents' and are not included in deficit averaging calculations for sector or institutional analysis, since including them would mask accountability failures in the same sector or institution.

6.4  The Floor Rule

The Accountability Deficit is floored at −10 for reporting purposes. Scores below −10 are documented in the Research File and flagged for Editorial Board review, but are reported as −10 in aggregate statistics to prevent outlier cases from distorting sector or institutional averages. The actual calculated score is always visible on the individual case page.

Decay Weighting — How Unfinished Accountability Erodes Over Time

7.1  The Problem This Solves

An investigation opened is not an investigation completed. An investigation opened and abandoned three years later is, for practical purposes, no accountability at all — and the Archive's scoring must reflect that. Without decay weighting, a government that consistently opens investigations it never intends to conclude would accumulate accountability scores that do not reflect reality: the investigations score points, and the points remain even as the investigations quietly die.

Decay weighting applies a systematic reduction to accountability scores for process stages that were initiated but not concluded within a defined period. It is the Index's primary protection against gaming.

7.2  The Decay Schedule

Decay events are documented in the case's change log with the date applied and the primary source evidence triggering the decay (for example, a 36-month anniversary with no published findings on record). Decay is not applied automatically — it requires a Research Director review and a change log entry.

7.3  Decay Is Not Irreversible

If an investigation that triggered decay subsequently produces findings, the decay is reversed and the score is updated upward. The change log records both the decay and the reversal. This means the Index rewards belated accountability — but records the delay through the Time to Response dimension, which will already reflect that the process was slow.

Formal and Political Accountability — Keeping Them Distinct

8.1  Why the Distinction Matters

The Accountability Score, as defined in Chapter 5, measures formal institutional accountability: investigations by official bodies, prosecutions by courts, reforms enacted by legislatures or agencies. It does not measure political accountability — officials voted out of office, parties losing elections, officials resigning under public pressure.

This distinction is maintained because the two forms of accountability are conceptually distinct and empirically different in Nigeria's political history. Conflating them produces distorted scores. If political accountability counted as Consequences, an official whose party lost the next election after a documented governance failure would score identically to an official who was convicted by a court. These are not the same accountability outcomes.

8.2  How Political Accountability Is Documented

Political accountability is documented in Archive cases — but in a dedicated field, not in the Accountability Score. Every case that involves named responsible parties who subsequently faced elections, party disciplinary processes, or public resignation includes a Political Accountability Note in the case template. This note records:

• Whether any named responsible party lost an elected office in an election where the documented failure was a documented public issue
• Whether any named responsible party was subject to party disciplinary action in documented connection with the failure
• Whether any named responsible party resigned from public office in documented connection with the failure

These events are visible on the case page and are included in the Annual Index Report as a separate analysis. But they do not contribute to the Accountability Score used in deficit calculations.

8.3  When Political Accountability Substitutes for Formal Accountability

One of the most important findings the Annual Index Report can produce is the pattern of cases where political accountability occurred but formal accountability did not. An official is voted out but not prosecuted. A party loses an election over a documented failure but no institutional reform follows. These patterns reveal something precise about how Nigerian accountability works: the political system can remove people, but the institutional system cannot hold them responsible. That gap — political accountability without formal accountability — is itself a diagnostic finding that the Index is uniquely positioned to document.

Scoring Rules and Evidence Anchors

9.1  The Non-Negotiable Rules

• Every scoring decision is recorded in the Research File alongside the primary source that anchors it
• Where two editors would reasonably score the same dimension differently given the same evidence, the lower score is assigned and the rationale for the lower score is documented; the Editorial Board may review on appeal
• No single editor may assign both the Impact Score and the Accountability Score for the same case; they must be assigned by different members of the editorial team
• All scores are reviewed by the Research Director and confirmed by the Editorial Lead before publication
• Where a score is contested by a named responsible party with primary source evidence, the score is placed Under Review and the Editorial Board adjudicates

9.2  Rounding and Precision

Individual dimension scores are whole numbers (0–5). The Time to Response score (A5) is calculated as a weighted average and rounded to one decimal place. The total Impact Score and total Accountability Score are whole numbers (sums of dimension scores). The Accountability Deficit is a whole number or, where Time to Response produces a decimal, rounded to one decimal place.

9.3  Handling Missing Evidence

Where primary source evidence is not available for a dimension, the score for that dimension is 0. The Research File must document: what evidence would establish a score on this dimension; what steps were taken to obtain it; and whether FOI requests were filed. A score of 0 due to missing evidence is different from a score of 0 due to confirmed absence of action — and the Research File must distinguish between them. In the published case, this distinction is visible in the Documentation Availability Note.

The Visual Accountability Profile

10.1  Purpose

Every published case displays a Visual Accountability Profile — a radar chart showing six dimensions at a glance. The profile makes the most important information about a case immediately readable without requiring the reader to understand index methodology. More importantly, it makes patterns visible across cases when profiles are compared.

10.2  The Six Axes

Note: The profile shows six of the ten total dimensions (three from Impact, three from Accountability). Institutional Impact (D3), Public Trust Impact (D5), Investigation (A1), and Time to Response (A5) are displayed numerically below the profile but not on the radar chart. Six axes are the maximum for radar chart readability. The six displayed are chosen because they are the most intuitively communicable to a general audience.

10.3  Reading Patterns Across Cases

The Visual Accountability Profile is most powerful when multiple cases are displayed together for a single institution or sector. A consistent pattern of large outer triangles (high impact) with small inner triangles (low accountability) is immediately visible as a sector or institution with a chronic accountability deficit. Specific axis patterns carry specific diagnoses:

• High Transparency, Low Legal Accountability: the institution discloses but does not prosecute. Investigation culture without consequences culture.
• High Investigation, Low Transparency, Low Reform: investigations are opened but findings are suppressed and nothing changes.
• High Human Impact, Zero on all Accountability axes: the most severe pattern — the people were harmed and the system did nothing.
• High Democratic Impact, Low Legal Accountability: democratic rights were violated and no one was held to account.

These pattern descriptions are not editorial judgments — they are diagnostic observations that follow directly from the scores. The Annual Index Report translates them into policy-relevant findings.

Scoring Workflow — How a Case Receives Its Index Score

11.1  The Sequence

• Impact Score first. The Research Director assigns all five Impact dimensions with primary source anchors for each. This is completed before the Accountability Score is assigned, to prevent the known accountability outcome from influencing the impact assessment.
• Accountability Score second. A different member of the editorial team (not the Research Director) assigns all five Accountability dimensions with primary source anchors. This separation prevents the same editor from inflating accountability scores to reduce deficits they find uncomfortable.
• Governance Outcome Classification cross-check. Before deficit calculation, the scoring editor confirms that the Index scores are consistent with the case's Governance Outcome Classification assigned in the Editorial Methodology. A case classified as Institutional Success should not produce a positive Accountability Deficit unless the Impact Score reflects a genuine harm — in which case the classification may need to be revised upward to Institutional Resilience. A case classified as Institutional Breakdown should produce a deficit in the High or Critical range. Inconsistencies between the classification and the Index scores are flagged to the Editorial Lead before proceeding.
• Pattern Detection Tags noted. The scoring editor records the case's Pattern Detection Tags in the Index Scoring Form. Tags are not scored numerically — they are metadata for the aggregation layer. But their presence must be confirmed at this stage so that the Annual Diagnosis can draw on complete, consistent tag data.
• Cross-check. The Research Director and Editorial Lead both review all ten dimension scores against the cited primary sources. Any score without a valid primary source anchor is returned for correction.
• Deficit calculation. The deficit is calculated and checked arithmetically. The classification (Critical / Severe / High / Moderate / Low / Balanced) is assigned.
• Editorial Lead sign-off. The Editorial Lead confirms the full Index score before publication.
• Tier 3 cases. All cases involving sitting officials require Editorial Board review of Index scores before publication, alongside the Tier 3 publication authorisation process.

11.2  The Index Scoring Form

Every published case has a completed Index Scoring Form in its Research File. The Form records: the score for each of the ten dimensions; the primary source anchor for each score; the Governance Outcome Classification with cross-check confirmation; the Pattern Detection Tags recorded; the name of the editor who assigned each score; the date of assignment; the cross-check reviewer; and any dissent from the assigned score with the dissenting editor's reasoning. The Index Scoring Form is retained with the Research File for the same retention period as all Research File documents.

Updating Index Scores as Cases Evolve

12.1  The Living Score Principle

The Accountability Score is a living score. It is assigned at publication based on what is known at that point. It is updated as accountability responses develop — investigations conclude, findings are published, prosecutions are commenced or abandoned, reforms are enacted or reversed. Every update is documented in the change log.

12.2  Triggers for Score Updates

• A formal investigation that was ongoing is concluded and findings published — A1 and A2 scores are updated
• A prosecution is commenced against a named responsible party — A3 score is updated
• A conviction is recorded — A3 score is updated to maximum
• A case is acquitted — A3 score remains at the prosecution-commenced level; a note records the acquittal
• Legislation is enacted in documented response to the failure — A4 score is updated
• A decay event is triggered — relevant dimension scores are reduced per Chapter 7
• A decay is reversed when a stalled process resumes — scores are updated upward

Update triggers are flagged through the Archive's quarterly case review process. The Research Director reviews all Active cases every 12 months specifically looking for developments in their accountability processes. Significant developments trigger an immediate update; routine reviews update at the quarterly mark.

12.3  The Accountability Trend

Because the Accountability Score is updated over time, each case accumulates an accountability trend — a record of how the deficit changed from the publication date through subsequent updates. This trend is published on the case page and is analysed in the Annual Index Report. Cases where the deficit narrowed significantly over time are evidence that sustained accountability pressure works. Cases where the deficit remained unchanged for five or more years are evidence of structural impunity.

System-Level Aggregation — From Case Scores to Institutional Profiles

13.1  The Aggregation Principle

Individual case scores produce system-level findings when aggregated across shared characteristics: the same institution, the same sector, the same state, the same administration, the same period. Aggregation converts a database of incidents into a diagnostic map of where accountability works and where it does not.

Aggregation is the moment at which the Archive's most important intellectual contribution becomes visible. A single case of procurement failure is a story. Thirty cases of procurement failure across twelve states, all scoring 0 on Consequences, is a finding about the Nigerian public accountability system.

13.2  Institution-Level Accountability Profile

Where the Archive has documented five or more cases involving the same institution, an Institution-Level Accountability Profile is generated. The Profile shows:

• The institution's median Impact Score across all documented cases — how serious are the events that occur within its mandate?
• The institution's median Accountability Score — how consistently does it respond to its own failures?
• The institution's median Accountability Deficit — what is the systematic gap?
• The institution's dimension-by-dimension Accountability breakdown — which accountability stages consistently fail? Investigation? Consequences? Reform?
• The institution's Governance Outcome Classification distribution — what proportion of its documented cases are Institutional Success, Resilience, Failure, Misconduct, or Breakdown? An institution that appears 80% in the Failure and Breakdown categories is a different institutional story from one that is 40% Failure but 30% Resilience.
• The institution's trend — is the deficit narrowing or widening across documented cases over time?

Profiles are published in the Annual Index Report. They are not published for individual institutions until the five-case threshold is reached, to prevent statistically thin data from producing unreliable profiles.

13.3  Pattern Detection Tag Analysis

Pattern Detection Tags (defined in Section 3.4 of the Editorial Methodology) are the second cross-cutting aggregation layer in the Index, alongside sector tags. Where sectors identify the governance domain in which a failure occurred, Pattern Detection Tags identify the mechanism by which it occurred. The distinction is critical for the Annual Diagnosis.

A Procurement Failure tag appearing exclusively in Procurement and Contracting sector cases suggests a sector-specific problem. A Procurement Failure tag appearing across Health, Education, Infrastructure, and Security sectors simultaneously is a cross-sectoral systemic finding — procurement integrity is failing as a governance mechanism regardless of the policy domain. Pattern tag aggregation makes that finding visible; sector analysis alone cannot.

13.4  Sector, State, and Administration Analysis

The same aggregation logic applies at sector level (minimum 10 cases), state level (minimum 8 cases), and administration level (minimum 10 cases across the same administration). These thresholds prevent statistically thin aggregations from being published as findings. Where thresholds have not been reached, the data is presented with explicit notation of the sample size and the caution that it should be interpreted tentatively.

The Nigeria Accountability Index Report

14.1  Publication Schedule

The Nigeria Accountability Index Report is published annually, beginning in Year 3 of the Archive's operation. Years 1 and 2 are the data accumulation phase: cases are scored, but the dataset is not yet large enough to support statistically meaningful institution or sector-level aggregations. The Year 3 report will cover all cases published since the Archive's launch.

The delay to Year 3 is deliberate and important. A premature Index report with ten cases would be statistically misleading and would expose the Archive to credible challenge on the basis of sample size. The integrity of the eventual Index depends on the Archive resisting pressure to publish it too early.

14.2  Report Structure

• Executive Summary: the most important findings in 500 words or fewer, written for a non-specialist audience
• Nigeria Accountability Overview: the aggregate deficit score across all published cases, with trend analysis year-on-year
• Governance Outcome Distribution: the balance of Institutional Success, Resilience, Failure, Misconduct, and Breakdown classifications across all cases — the Archive's published record of what Nigerian governance looked like in the year under review
• Sector Analysis: accountability deficit by sector, with the five highest and five lowest performing sectors analysed in detail, cross-referenced against their Governance Outcome Classification distribution
• Pattern Detection Analysis: the top five most frequent pattern tags and their cross-sector distribution; tag co-occurrence findings; pattern trends year-on-year
• Institutional Profiles: all institutions meeting the five-case threshold, with full profiles, dimension-by-dimension analysis, and Governance Outcome Classification distribution
• State Analysis: all states meeting the eight-case threshold, with deficit comparisons and trend analysis
• Administration Analysis: accountability performance by administration, cross-referenced against sectors and institutions
• Political Accountability Analysis: the separate analysis of political accountability outcomes documented in Political Accountability Notes across all cases
• Positive Accountability Precedents: all cases classified as Institutional Success or Resilience, analysed for what made them different and what they reveal about conditions under which Nigerian governance functions
• Where Accountability Breaks Down: the Annual Diagnosis — in which dimension does accountability most consistently fail, and what does Pattern Detection Tag analysis reveal about the mechanism?
• Methodology Notes: any changes to scoring methodology since the previous report, with explanation
• Limitations: what the dataset overrepresents and underrepresents, and how readers should interpret findings accordingly

14.3  The Annual Diagnosis

The Annual Diagnosis is the most important section of the Report. It answers the question the index was designed to answer: where exactly does accountability break down? From Version 1.1 of the methodology onwards, the Diagnosis is produced by combining two analytical inputs: the dimension-by-dimension breakdown of Accountability Scores across all cases, and the Pattern Detection Tag frequency and co-occurrence analysis.

The dimension-by-dimension analysis tells you where in the accountability process the system fails. If Investigation (A1) scores are consistently high but Consequences (A3) scores are consistently zero, the diagnosis is: investigations are opened but prosecutions never follow. The system has investigation capacity but not political will to prosecute.

The Pattern Detection Tag analysis tells you the structural mechanism underneath that failure. If the Accountability Evasion tag and the Political Interference tag both appear with high frequency on the same cases where A3 scores are zero, the diagnosis becomes more specific: prosecutions are not failing because the system lacks capacity — they are failing because political actors are documented as interfering with accountability processes. Those are different problems requiring different policy responses.

The Annual Diagnosis combines both inputs into a named, evidence-referenced finding. Every diagnosis in the report cites the specific Index scores and Pattern tags that produced it. Every reader can examine the underlying cases. The diagnosis is the synthesis, not the opinion.

Bias Controls Specific to the Index

15.1  Why the Index Needs Additional Bias Controls

The Editorial Methodology (Chapter 23 of the main methodology document) specifies bias controls for the Archive as a whole. The Index requires additional controls specific to the scoring process, because the Index produces rankings and comparisons that are especially vulnerable to appearing politically motivated.

15.2  The Six Index-Specific Bias Controls

1. Mandatory Double-Blind Scoring

As specified in Chapter 11, the Impact Score and Accountability Score must be assigned by different editors. Neither editor knows the other's scores when making their own assessment. Scores are compared only after both are complete. This prevents the known accountability outcome from influencing the impact assessment, and prevents the impact severity from inflating or deflating the accountability assessment.

2. Administration Balance Audit

Every six months, the Research Director audits the distribution of Accountability Deficit scores by administration. If cases from one administration show systematically higher deficits than comparable cases from another — controlling for sector and impact severity — the scoring methodology is reviewed for bias. This does not mean all deficits must be equal across administrations. It means that equivalent events must produce equivalent scores regardless of which administration they occurred under.

3. Sector Comparability Check

Before any sector-level finding is published in the Annual Report, a comparability check confirms that the cases used to produce the finding are comparable in type and evidence quality. A sector that appears to have a high accountability deficit because it contains many cases of a type that structurally scores high on Impact (deaths, constitutional failures) must be distinguished from a sector whose cases score identically to other sectors but received weaker accountability responses.

4. Published Scoring Rationale

The scoring rationale for every dimension of every published case is summarised in a publicly visible Scoring Notes section on the case page. This allows researchers, named responsible parties, and the general public to see exactly why each dimension was scored as it was. Opacity in scoring is the primary vulnerability of any index to charges of bias. Transparency in rationale is the primary defence.

5. External Audit

From Year 2 onwards, a sample of 10% of all scored cases is reviewed annually by an external auditor — an independent researcher or institution with no connection to the Archive — who verifies that the scoring methodology was applied correctly and consistently. The auditor's findings are published in the Annual Index Report.

6. No Index Score for Cases Under Legal Challenge

Where a case is the subject of active legal proceedings that challenge the factual basis of the Archive's entry, the Index score for that case is suspended and displayed as 'Under Legal Review' on the case page. The score is restored when proceedings are resolved. This prevents the Index from appearing to make findings in a matter that a court is actively examining.

What Cannot Be Changed Without Full Editorial Board Vote

The following elements of the Accountability Index are constitutionally protected in the same manner as the core editorial independence provisions of the Archive Constitution. They may not be amended by the Annual Methodology Review or by any single authority within the project. Amendment requires a two-thirds majority vote of the full Editorial Board, followed by public disclosure of the amendment and its reasons:

• The Accountability Deficit formula — Impact Score minus Accountability Score
• The requirement that every dimension score be anchored to a primary source
• The Double-Blind Scoring rule — Impact and Accountability scores must be assigned by different editors
• The Decay Weighting schedule — the specific timelines and reductions applied to unfinished accountability processes
• The separation of formal and political accountability — political accountability events may not contribute to the Accountability Score
• The minimum case threshold for institutional and sector aggregations
• The requirement for external audit from Year 2
• The suspension of Index scores during active legal proceedings

END OF INSTRUMENT SPECIFICATION

The 100 Archive Project  ·  Accountability Index  ·  Version 1.0  ·  2026

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