compass

compass is the federation’s self-assessment instrument. It lets a Lab place itself, for each of the sixteen SYFERS conditions, six design rules and ten ORRI principles, on one of four levels: absent, emerging, established, embedded. The placements are the Lab’s own. Nobody scores the Lab.

A Lab at absent on a condition is not failing; it is saying “we have not begun this yet, and we are honest about it.” A Lab at embedded is saying “this part of our work is now load-bearing, in the soil, no longer a project.” Two Labs that have used compass for a year can compare their trajectories, not their scores.

compass is not a ranking. The federation does not produce a leaderboard, does not aggregate placements into a single score, and does not gate membership on a minimum self-assessment. The Lab’s placements are visible to the Lab. Aggregate, anonymised patterns may be visible to the Council if the Lab opts in; this is held in compass’s consent layer, not assumed by default. compass reads identity and Lab membership from people.

How the instruments relate

people is the floor. Identity, membership, consent. chart, compass, and lens all read from people; they do not duplicate it. A change in people propagates to all three by definition.

• interpretationlens
• registrationchart
• orientationcompass · this instrument
• relationpeople