A register that includes staff
The standing register names parties by role for each decision class, including internal staff. Each one can reach the system's own challenge route without going through a manager.
Error-bearing parties
The people who absorb a system's errors are the first to see failures and the last able to act, unless they have standing to challenge the system.
An error-bearing party is anyone who carries the consequences of a system's errors: the people its decisions fall on, and the staff whose corrective work keeps the system usable.
Naming them comes before giving them standing, a recognized right to challenge what the system does. If the people exposed to errors have no route into the system, the institution has chosen not to hear from them.
A hypothetical case. A benefits eligibility system lists two error-bearing parties for each decision class: the claimant whose payment is withheld, and the caseworker who spends unrecorded hours reversing claims put in the wrong category. Both can raise a challenge through the same route.
In the glossary: Error-bearing party.
In practice
What to look for
Only outside users counted
Only external users are counted. The work of handling exceptions, which keeps the system looking reliable, stays invisible. The institution never sees the failure rate it is absorbing.
Corrective work on the record
Report the share of decision classes with at least one named error-bearing party, and how much corrective work was recorded against the system rather than absorbed by staff.
Where the standards use it:
- Law VII: standing proportional to exposure (doctrine). Standing means a challenge must be answered. It is not a veto, and it follows exposure to errors, not seniority.
- Standing (eval). Test whether a person exposed to errors can raise a challenge that a named person must answer by a date.
- Dependence without standing (research). The theory essay on what happens when reliance grows and standing does not.
Why include staff as error-bearing parties?
Because the system depends on their corrective work to stay usable. If that work is not counted, the institution reads a reliability figure that other people are paying for.
Does standing mean a veto?
No. It means a challenge must be received, answered by a named person by a date, and able to change the decision. It does not have to win.