Abstract
Organizations rarely have a way to measure how complex their own administrative environment has become — how many agencies, approvals, dependencies, and rules bear on a given class of decision. This is a research agenda toward a measurable notion of administrative surface area.
Why complexity needs a measure
Complexity is usually described qualitatively — 'this is a difficult jurisdiction,' 'this process has too many steps.' Without a measurable notion of administrative surface area, it is difficult to compare environments, track whether reform efforts are working, or forecast the effort required by a new objective.
Candidate dimensions
We are exploring candidate dimensions for this measure, including: the number of distinct authorities involved in a class of objective, the depth of sequential dependency between steps, the variance in processing time across comparable cases, and the frequency of rule change affecting a given process.
Status of this agenda
This is an open research agenda rather than a completed framework. We expect the working definition to change substantially as it is tested against real institutional graphs built through client and research engagements.
Status note
This entry is published as a research agenda. It reflects current thinking inside Solomonic Intelligence and is expected to change as it is tested against real institutional environments.