Open assessment

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Open assessment (previously also known as pyrkilo) is a method that attempts to answer the following research question and to apply the answer in practical assessments:

How can scientific information and value judgements be organised for improving societal decision-making in a situation where open participation is allowed?

Open assessment can also refer to the actual making of such an assessment (precisely: open assessment process), or the end product of the process (precisely: open assessment product or report). Usually, the use of the term open assessment is clear, but if there is a danger of confusion, the precise term (open assessment method, process, or product) should be used. In practice, the assessment processes are performed using Internet tools (notably Opasnet) among traditional tools. Stakeholders and other interested people are able to participate, comment, and edit its contents already since an early phase of the process. Open assessment is based on a clear information structure and scientific method as the ultimate rule for dealing with disputes.

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For a brief description about open assessment and the related workspace, see Opasnet.

Basics of Open assessment

Open assessment is not very difficult as such. Usually the problem is that people don't believe how simple it actually is.

Open assessment typically starts with a need for an informed decision. Someone must decide about something, and the decision should be based on the best information about the topic and the objectives that are pursued. The decision can be anything, and the decision-maker can be anyone. Open assessment does not perform too well, if the decision is very small and does not warrant much effort (where do we go for lunch today?), or if a large part of the related information is private or cannot be released for other reasons to open scrutiny (which girl should I marry?). However, both of these decisions can also be assessed from a general point of view, and then they are good topics for open assessment (What are good places for lunch such that serve good food, are not expensive, and do not take too much time from our workplace? Which properties of a relationship or a potential spouse predict successful and happy, and which predict unsuccessful and unhappy marriage?)

As the examples showed, the decision was formulated as a question. This is the first, critical step in open assessment. All information gathering starts with an identification of a question that needs to be answered. If you don't know your question, you actually don't know what you are trying to decide. Therefore it is essential that a question is formulated.

The question must be clear enough that it can be answered unambiguously. It must also be possible to see which answers are better than others. In the case of a decision question, some performance criteria must be defined. This means that we must define what a good decision is, in other words, which are outcomes to be pursued and which are to be avoided. Although "successful and happy marriage" is still rather fuzzy, we can assume that if a large group of people ranked a large number of marriages based on successfulness and happiness, the results would show clear patterns. In addition, the research question rules out a lot of objectives such as the amount of money that the potential farther-in-law is going to give to the newly-wed couple. Or, to be precise, this money comes to the assessment only through its potential to facilitate a happy marriage, but it does not have any intrinsic value in the assessment.

When the question has been defined, the rest of the work is to answer the question as well as it is possible with the information available. The scientific method is applied here. It means that anyone can suggest potential answers, and other people try to falsify them, i.e. use data and argumentation to show that an answer is wrong or irrelevant, given the question.

An answer to the main question may depend on a lot of other issues. These, again, are framed as questions, and their answers are used to answer the original question. Thus, the whole assessment consists of pairs of questions and answers.

Why open assessment is a revolutionary method?

There are several things that are done differently, and arguably better, in open assessment compared with traditional ways of collecting information. These are briefly listed here and then described in more detail.

1. Open assessment can be applied to most decision-making situations.
2. Open assessment helps to focus on relevant issues.
3. Open assessment separates the policy-making (developing and evaluating potential decision options) and the actual decision-making (making of the decision by the authoritative body) and opens the policy-making so that anyone can participate and bring in their information.
4. Open assessment breaks the information monopoly of the authoritative body and motivates participation.
5. Open assessment makes the information collection quicker and easier.
6. Open assessment is based on the scientific method.

See also

• Opasnet
• Open Assessors' Network
• Open assessment method
• Opasnet base