Governance
Organizational structure
The suite (Veridi, Pragma, Praxis) is operated by a small Canadian cooperative-in-formation, structured around a lean operating model.
Currently operated ad-hoc by Jo McBurnie and Shawn McBurnie; next steps include formal incorporation as a cooperative in Canada.
Transparency commitments
Open methodologies
The complete methodologies for all three products — Veridi’s source hierarchy, decision trees, specialist frameworks, gaming countermeasures, confidence calibration framework, and Institutional Reliability Index; Pragma’s evidence quality framework, normative reasoning protocol, transferability rubrics, and dynamic implementation risk factors; Praxis’s leverage matching, sustainability risk, gaming countermeasures, outcome tracking, and the 9 pathway specifications — are fully documented and available on request via our contact form. This is a deliberate choice: a system that asks for trust while concealing its methods is asking for exactly the kind of unjustified confidence the suite is designed to detect.
As we roll out public-facing access we address and define storage, retention, and anonymization of queries and other user data. The calibration feedback loop (v1.3) documents the consent, anonymization, and k-anonymity rules that govern outcome data.
Documented validation
Our validation data for each product — test claims, expected results, actual results, scoring criteria, and limitations — is publicly documented. The validation report and changelog include both the strengths and the caveats of the testing process across all three methodologies.
Clarity on limitations
The cooperative publicly documents what each product cannot do, where validation has gaps, and where the evidence for a methodology’s effectiveness is weaker than we’d like. See known limitations.
Version history
All changes to all three methodologies are tracked in a unified changelog. When components are added, modified, or deprecated, the change and its rationale are documented.
Funding model
The cooperative operates without venture capital, advertising revenue, or other funding models that create incentive misalignment with accurate reasoning. Prospective funding sources include:
- Grant funding from organizations supporting information integrity, evidence-based policy, or civic-action infrastructure
- Institutional partnerships
- In-kind contributions
- User-level contributions, e.g. via Patreon
The cooperative does not and will not accept funding from sources that would create conflicts of interest with its mission across any of the three products.
Editorial independence
Each product’s methodology operates independently of any funder, partner, or political entity. The methodologies follow documented procedures — source hierarchy, evidence-quality framework, decision trees, gaming countermeasures, normative reasoning protocols — that apply equally regardless of who is making a claim, proposing a policy, or pursuing a goal, and regardless of what conclusion might be politically convenient.
Gaming countermeasures include explicit checks for selective skepticism (applying different evidence standards to different sides), and the Institutional Reliability Index is applied based on documented evidence of institutional degradation, not political preference. Pragma’s normative framework explicitly separates empirical assessment from value choice and routes contested-value decisions to the user via the Contested Value Map protocol — never silently picks a side.