Documentation Review

Documentation Review is the examination by a constituted panel of the documents already generated by an earlier examination, conducted in order to establish whether the earlier examination was itself adequately documented. It is distinct from the review being documented — which is a prior and, where the Committee of Permanent Review has ruled correctly, a substantially different matter — though the two are frequently confused on the same landing, by the same clerks, in the same week.

Origin and first recension

The practice is first attested on Floor 1440 (the Landing of Duplicate Reading), where a party of the Fourth Ascending Expedition found nine clerks examining a tenth clerk's scrutiny of a file that had been destroyed in 11,908. The file's destruction was itself the subject of the scrutiny. The expedition's inventory records the scene plainly: "Nothing had yet been examined. The examination was reported as proceeding well." Fourth Ascending Expedition, Inventory of Floor 1440, item 6

The practice was regularised under the Third Concordance, which provides that a Documentation Review may be convened whenever documentation exists and its sufficiency is doubted — the doubt being, on the Concordance's reasoning, sufficiently well evidenced by its own existence. Clause 7 of the same instrument defines Pre-Review Documentation as all records materially prerequisite to the lawful initiation of a review, a definition the Documentation Review panels have found applicable to almost anything, and have applied to almost everything.

Procedure

A Documentation Review is convened by the lodging of a Pre-Conditional Index at the designated Review Chamber, together with a signed Pre-Validation certificate from the originating department and a stamped and counter-stamped copy of the same certificate from the department that originated the originating department. The panel then sits for the Quiescence Interval, which the Office of Granular Audit reads as a minimum of twelve hours and several older readings treat as a maximum. Where the interval closes before the panel has convened, the Documentation Review proceeds as a Documentation Review in arrears, and is entered as such.

The panel's finding is delivered in one of four registers: sufficiently documented, insufficiently documented, documented (form disputed), and documented by another panel. Only the first requires the original review to take place. The remaining three are returned to the originating floor with a note requesting clarity, which is answered by a further Documentation Review.

"Where a review of a review is found to require review, the second review shall not be construed as a review of the first review, but as the first review of the second review's documentation."

— Third Concordance, Annex 4, admissibility of nested findings

The Islington Register and the dispute of 12,011

In the winter of 12,011 the Documentation Review panel on Floor 1440 issued a finding that its own finding was insufficiently documented. The matter was referred upward and returned by a series of panels on Floors 1441 through 1449, each of which declined jurisdiction on the ground that the documentation under review belonged to the floor below. The Board of Equitable Review eventually resolved the tangle in a ruling now known as the Islington Register, which held — over a dissent of two — that a panel may not review its own documentation, may review the documentation of any panel that has reviewed it, and may review the documentation of any panel it intends to review, prospectively.

The ruling has since been cited in every Documentation Review on Floors 1440–1449, and in no others. The Judge-Advocate of Standing Deferments has declined eleven times to say whether it binds outside that range, on the ground that the question cannot be settled until the documentation is complete.

The question of the subject

The Substantivist School, whose position on Procedural Certifications is elsewhere recorded, holds that a Documentation Review has no distinct subject: that the documentation reviewed and the review of it are continuous, and that the panel is not examining anything so much as continuing it. Against this, the Formalist position — maintained chiefly in the scriptoria on the north side, where a Clause 4 affray is still remembered — insists that the documents are the subject, plainly and exclusively, and that the panel's curiosity about what they document is a distraction the panel is not empowered to pursue.

The Directorate of Cartographic Review has declined to take a position, noting that the as-built floorplan of a chamber is certified in one state, and that a panel reviewing documentation of a chamber previously certified may find its own position on the plan, which it may not. A note appended to the certification of Floor 1440 reads only: "Panel to be depicted, or not depicted, as the certifying officer directs." Directorate of Cartographic Review, Certification 1440/b

Recorded instances

• Floor 1440 — the first recorded Documentation Review, 11,914, subject unknown.
• Floor 1441 — the review of the review of Floor 1440, 11,920, subject disputed.
• Floor 1447 — the review of the reviews of Floors 1440 through 1446, 11,998, subject withdrawn.
• Floor 1440 — the review of the review of the review, 12,011, subject this article.

The Office of Granular Audit maintains that no Documentation Review has yet produced a document, only a finding about a document. The Great Audit of Cycle 12,112 is expected to reconsider this. The panel will not be convened above Floor 1449.