CHAIN OF INFORMATION DECAY
Every step passed it on faithfully. What arrived is not what left.
01 DEFINITION
Condition in which an account passes through several parties who each shorten or reframe it within their own competence, so no single step loses much and what reaches the end has lost what mattered.
02 CONDITIONS
UNCERTAINTY
UNRECORDED
What each step left out is not carried with what it passed on.
TIME PRESSURE
MODERATE
Each hand-off is unhurried; the accumulation is what fails.
ERROR ASYMMETRY
DEFERRED
No single omission costs anything, and the sum of them does.
OPERATOR STATE
SUPERVISORY
Whoever receives it at the end is judging from an account they cannot go behind.
03 WHERE IT APPEARS
MEDICALA history passes through several handovers, each summarising within its own competence.
PUBLIC SERVICEA case travels through departments that each reframe it for the next.
LOGISTICSAn exception is relayed through several parties who each shorten it reasonably.
ENERGYA fault report crosses field, control and engineering, each keeping what is theirs.
CONSTRUCTIONAn instruction passes from design through contractor to trade, reframed at each step.
EDUCATIONA learner's history crosses stages, each summarised for the stage that follows.
04 WHERE THIS IS SURFACING
This surfaces wherever information crosses more than two parties. Each hand-off is defensible on its own terms, and the loss is only visible from the ends.
What stays unresolved is which step answers for the whole — asking each to pass everything on defeats the purpose of having them, and asking each to judge means the judging happens without sight of the end.