What the purchase obliges you to, every year

Two columns everybody already knows about, and a third nobody counts

Course 22.5 settled the first part of this, and this course does not repeat the working. In a technology programme the licence line is the smallest number in the year. The large one is hours: training, rebuilding what the new process needs, and writing the procedures. That is true of everything in Erimtan's register.

There is a third column. It exists only for the systems in the bottom two rows of lesson 1's table, the ones that touch somebody else's data or judge a person. It is the recurring cost of being allowed to run the thing at all: the permission letters, the disclosure log, the redaction step, the challenge route, the register entry, and the annual re-test.

It is worth keeping separate from the running cost course 22.5 prices in its own lesson on parallel running. That one is a defect with a retirement date: a second process nobody chose, which a dated rule ends. This one is not a defect and it has no retirement date. It ends when the system does.

The number, and where it comes from

The bottom row is what the model of lesson 3 would have cost to run lawfully and fairly, itemised: re-measuring the record against an independent count across seven lines, 48.0 hours; the challenge route at 2.2 hours a challenge, so 30.8; the appeals, 13.5; written notice to the workforce and the consultation that goes with it, 20.0; the register entry and the decision log, 24.0; the annual re-test, 9.5.

Now look at what predicts the spread. Same building, same year, same finance office. The drafting assistant obliges USD 98.40 and the absence list obliges USD 3,586.68, which is thirty-six times as much. The two columns that produce that difference are exactly the two columns of the lesson 1 register: whose data goes in, and what decision comes out. Nothing about the technology enters the calculation.

The register is not paperwork. It is the estimating tool for the only cost line nobody budgets.

And it is the number that decides whether to build the thing

The absence list's measured benefit was USD 1,290.00 a year in better floater placement. Its obligation cost is USD 3,586.68, which is 2.78 times the benefit. Erimtan would have discovered that in an afternoon if anybody had asked before it was built, rather than after it was complained about.

The line-level replacement obliges the register row and nothing else: USD 98.40. It holds no personal data, so there is nobody to notify, nothing to challenge and no record to re-measure. And from lesson 3, it forecasts better.

That the governance arithmetic and the engineering answer agreed is not luck. An obligation is created by holding somebody else's data. The version that holds none creates none. A factory that costs the obligation before it builds will usually find the cheaper design on its own, without anybody having to make a speech about ethics.

Closing the purchase honestly

USD 0.58 a document is thin, and Erimtan bought it anyway. It wrote down why, in one sentence on the same page as the number. The 440.31 hours come out of the fortnight before a shipping window, when the clerks are the bottleneck and nothing else in the building can be moved into that fortnight.

That is a legitimate reason to buy something. It is also a completely different document from a business case that quietly rounds the saving up until the money works. A stated non-financial reason survives a review. An unstated one turns into an argument about the arithmetic eighteen months later, and the arithmetic then loses.

The register, one year on

Eleven systems became four registered and seven stopped. Then the survey was re-run in month five, because a ban is not a control.

Six were in use: the four registered, and two new ones. Both of the two were registered within a fortnight rather than banned.

The number worth keeping is not either of those. In the first quarter after the register existed, 0 people volunteered a system they had started using. In the quarter after the register approved two of them, 5 did.

A register that only ever refuses becomes a register people route around. A system you cannot see is a system with no permission, no challenge route and no owner, which is where this course started. Re-running the survey costs 3.5 hours a quarter, and it is the cheapest control in the building by a distance.

What a factory owes, in five sentences

Three to your buyers:

1. This is exactly what we send, field by field, and what we remove before we send it.
2. This is the provider, and this is its own written commitment about what it does with what we send.
3. This is who at your company approved it, on what date, at the address your agreement names.

One to your workforce:

1. Any list that names you has a reason you can ask for, and a route to challenge it that is counted and reported.

One on the wall of the office:

1. No produced value reaches a document that binds us to a buyer unless a named person has compared it to the source.

Five sentences. Every one of them is the output of a lesson in this course, rather than a value anybody had to be persuaded of.

Act as a finance-literate governance lead who knows the licence is the smallest line, and that there is a third line nobody counts. Cost the recurring obligation created by a proposed system. I will give you: [WHAT IT DOES], [WHOSE DATA GOES IN — MINE, A BUYER'S OR A WORKER'S], [WHAT COMES OUT AND WHICH DECISION IT REACHES], [WHO OUTSIDE MY COMPANY IS AFFECTED BY A WRONG OUTPUT], [WHAT MY BUYERS' AGREEMENTS REQUIRE OF ME ABOUT OUTSIDE PARTIES AND ABOUT WORKERS' DATA], [THE ANNUAL FEE], [THE MEASURED OR ESTIMATED ANNUAL BENEFIT AND HOW IT WAS ARRIVED AT], [MY LOADED HOURLY COST]. Do the following. First, list every recurring obligation this system creates, in hours a year, each one named as a task somebody performs: permission letters and their renewals, the disclosure log, any redaction step, notice and consultation, the challenge route and the appeals it generates, re-measuring the underlying record against something independent, keeping the register entry, the annual re-test, and rehearsing exit. Say which of these do not apply, and why. Second, total it in money and set it beside the fee, and tell me the multiple. Third, set the obligation cost beside the benefit, and if it is larger than the benefit say so in one sentence at the top of your answer. Fourth, propose a version of the same system that holds less of somebody else's data, cost its obligation column the same way, and tell me honestly whether it does the job worse. Fifth, give me the four lines I should report once a year on this system.

What this course would not tell you, and why

No model, no vendor, no product, no version, no price list and no published accuracy figure appears anywhere in these six lessons. That is deliberate. Everything in that list changes faster than a course can be revised, and a reader who repeats a stale one in a meeting is worse off than a reader who has nothing to repeat. Every figure here is Erimtan's own measurement of its own documents, its own people and its own book, and it is labelled as such where you meet it.

The transferable part is not a number. It is what to do with a number somebody hands you. Ask which documents, measured against what reference, at what unit of error, and against what you do now. If those four have no answers, you have been shown a demonstration, and a demonstration is a statement about the demonstrator.

What to take away

1. There is a third cost column beyond the licence and the hours: the recurring price of being allowed to run the thing. It has no retirement date.
2. It is predicted by the register's own two columns, whose data goes in and what decision comes out, and by nothing about the technology.
3. Erimtan's four systems ranged from USD 98.40 to USD 3,586.68 a year of obligation, a spread of thirty-six times.
4. Cost the obligation before you build. The absence list obliged 2.78 times its own benefit, and the design holding no personal data obliged almost nothing and forecast better.
5. Publish the thin net and the non-financial reason together. USD 0.58 a document survives a review when the reason beside it is written down.
6. Re-run the survey; do not rely on a ban. Erimtan went from 0 volunteered systems to 5 once the register started approving things.
7. Five sentences: three to your buyers, one to your workforce, one on the wall.