Independence and Disclosure

Version 1.1. Issued and adopted 29 September 2026 (LOG-001 D-056), superseding v1.0 of 13 September 2026 (adopted 20 September 2026, LOG-001 D-019, D-026). Change at v1.1: Rule 3 names the public-purpose extract among the relationships disclosed; a note to Rule 5 fixes what a grant, research or State Partner may propose (measures for a future scan, before its data is collected) and what no partner may touch (any file's findings); section 3 names the extract. No rule is otherwise altered. Status: adopted. Adapted from AGR-GOV-004 of the Accessibility Governance Record and written for the Index now that paid partners, licensees, and funders exist.

1. Why this document exists

The Index is about to be funded in shares by the bodies it documents, licensed to institutions that use it, and cited by legislators, auditors, and advocates who disagree with each other. It survives that only if no reader can find a way in which money changed what a file says. The rules below are written so that they can be quoted back to a hostile reader in full.

2. The rules

Rule 1. Every jurisdiction in frame is documented, without exception. The fifty-one files are built regardless of whether a state, a state school, an agency, or an organization in that state is a client, a partner, a funder, or a critic of Novara Consulting Group, its principals, or its brands. Omission is not available as a courtesy or as a sanction.

Rule 2. No payment alters a figure, a code, a frame decision, or a finding. A State Partner fee, a license, a commissioned build, a funded wave, or any other payment buys the work and its timing and nothing else. The only route by which a released file changes is the notice and correction procedure at STD-005, which is open to everyone on identical terms.

Rule 3. Every file carries a disclosure block. The narrative's opening section and the workbook README state every relationship between Novara Consulting Group, its principals, its brands, or its instruments and any body named in the file: client, former client, State Partner, licensee, funder, prospect contacted, recipient of a public-purpose extract (with its date and purpose), or none. "None" is stated in words. The block is compiled from the firm's records at each release and dated.

Rule 4. Declarations. Every person who works on a state file declares, before starting, any relationship with any body named in the file, and the declaration is filed in 04_Verification. Where a declared relationship bears on a finding, a second person reviews that finding at arm's length and the trail says so.

Rule 5. Funders, partners, and licensees receive no editorial input. They see a file when everyone else does, or under notice at STD-005 on the same terms as the bodies named. They may propose corrections through the correction route and through no other channel. Acknowledgement of a State Partner is a named line on the state page and nothing more.

Note to Rule 5, measures for future scans (29 September 2026). A grant partner, an SBIR or other research partner, a State Partner or a funder may propose what a future scan measures: a field, an indicator, an instrument class, a question the frameworks do not yet ask. A proposal is taken up, if at all, by the program before any data for that scan is collected, is recorded in the framework document that governs the scan with the proposer named, and applies to every state alike. No partner of any kind has input on what any file finds: not a coverage code, a frame decision, a figure, a finding, a formulation or a disclosure, and no measure is added to a file after its data collection has begun. The disclosure block of every file built under a measure names its proposer. A proposal that would shape a finding rather than a measure is declined and logged.

Rule 6. Notice and correction are not sales channels. A notice, a correction acknowledgement, or a response to a licensee carries no description of the firm's services, no offer, and no invitation beyond the accuracy of the file. A question about services is answered separately, after release.

Rule 7. The firm's own house is in order. The Index's site meets the standard the firm advises on, publishes its own accessibility statement and contact routes, and is held to the same evidence and citation discipline as any file.

Rule 8. Relationship to the SLAT Index and the Accessibility Governance Record. Where a body documented in the Index is also a SLAT Index client or an AGR entity, the disclosure block says so; the twenty-four month publication bar of the SLAT Index applies to evaluative findings there and not to the documentary findings here, which are quotations and counts rather than ratings.

3. Paid tiers and the public window

The state page's summary figures, the method, the register, the DOI, and the correction route are free to everyone; the file itself (narrative, workbook, trail) is licensed under STD-004. A licensed file and a free summary carry the same figures; the tier changes what a reader can download, never what the Index says. A state-level body the file names may receive, at no fee and for one stated public purpose, a public-purpose extract of the free figures under STD-004 section 3 and NDEDI-FEE-001 section 4a; the extract is never conditioned on any contribution, and it is disclosed under Rule 3.

4. Breach

A breach of any rule is logged at LOG-001 with the file, the person, and the remedy; the affected file is re-issued under a new version with the breach stated in its changelog; and a second breach of the same rule by the same person ends that person's work on the Index.