Governance Domains
Not assessed is not zero
A domain the evidence cannot support is reported as not assessed and excluded from the overall score, never scored as zero or quietly omitted.
This is the commitment the rest of the methodology is built around.
Three different things
| Situation | Reported as |
|---|---|
| Evidenced, and the environment is in poor shape | A low score |
| Evidenced, and nothing of that kind exists in the account | No applicable resources, excluded from scoring |
| Not evidenced enough to support a conclusion | Not assessed, with the population stated |
Collapsing the second or third into the first would tell a board their environment is failing when what actually happened is that GovIntel could not see it.
Why zero is the wrong answer
Scoring an unevidenced domain as zero produces a number that looks like a measurement and is not one. It drags down the overall score, appears on the cover of a board pack, and cannot be distinguished afterwards from a genuine finding.
Why silence is also the wrong answer
Omitting the domain entirely produces a pack that looks complete and is not. A reader would assume everything not mentioned was fine.
So the domain is named, its state is given, and the population it was measured over is stated.
What it means for the overall score
An overall score is calculated only when every offered domain was scored. A domain that was not assessed withholds the overall rating rather than causing it to be re-based across the rest.
The states you may see
Assessed and healthy, assessed with issues found, collected but not rated, no applicable resources, collector failed, permission denied, or unavailable. Six distinct states where there were once two. See Evidence capture states.