Correction and Appeals Policy

Status: Proposed, non-operational v0.1 policy
Current result issuance: No official evaluations, scores, profiles, or credentials

This policy defines the minimum future correction and appeal process. In v0.1, specification disagreements use the contribution/RFC process; there is no candidate result to appeal.

The Independence and Institutional Firewall controls the stricter authority, role-separation, and external-majority requirements for any future official human result, tier, or credential.

1. Principles

A person may challenge material facts, attribution, evidence eligibility, review, integrity findings, accommodations, procedure, or result calculation.
The appeal decision maker must be separate from the original disputed decision.
Filing an appeal must not reduce a result or invite retaliation.
The process must protect candidate, customer, reference, reviewer, hidden-case, and security information.
A successful appeal corrects the record through a new event; history is not silently rewritten.
Payment, sponsorship, employer, training, or public pressure cannot influence priority or outcome.

2. Correction before appeal

A participant should be able to request correction of an objective factual or clerical error without filing a formal appeal. Examples include an incorrect date, duplicated evidence, wrong subject mapping, calculation mismatch, or disclosure preference that was not applied.

A correction that could change a capability finding, verification class, critical gate, integrity state, or credential status requires documented review and a new result event.

3. Appealable matters

A future participant may appeal:

identity or contribution attribution;
evidence rejection, maturity, verification, or eligibility;
material omission or contradiction handling;
rubric application or adjudication;
failure to provide an approved accommodation;
reviewer conflict or procedural error;
integrity, suspension, or revocation decision;
deterministic calculation or version mismatch;
public-profile disclosure error;
a decision not to correct a material factual error.

General disagreement with a published benchmark rule is not an individual appeal unless the rule was applied incorrectly or unlawfully. Proposed rule changes use CONTRIBUTING.md and GOVERNANCE.md.

4. Filing

Before official evaluation begins, the operator must publish a private filing channel, accessible format, required fields, identity-verification method, filing window, and available assistance.

The proposed default filing window is 30 calendar days after notice of the appealable decision, with extensions for disability, delayed discovery, access barriers, or other good cause. This default is not operational until adopted with participant terms.

An appeal should identify:

the disputed decision and date;
the claimed factual, procedural, rubric, conflict, accommodation, integrity, or calculation issue;
relevant evidence already in the authorized record;
the requested remedy;
any urgency or safety concern.

An appellant must not submit customer-confidential or third-party personal information beyond what they are authorized to provide.

5. Triage and interim status

The appeals officer determines whether the request is a correction, appeal, security/integrity incident, conduct report, or benchmark-policy proposal.

Where leaving a result active could cause material harm or misrepresentation, the operator may temporarily mark it disputed or suspended. Interim action is not a finding and must be narrowly scoped.

The proposed service targets are acknowledgement within five business days, scope/eligibility notice within ten business days, and a reasoned decision within 30 calendar days after a complete record. Complex cases may take longer with periodic notice. No target applies until an operational owner and filing channel are published.

6. Independence

An appeal must be assigned to a qualified, non-conflicted reviewer or panel that:

did not make or supervise the original disputed decision;
has no material relationship described in CONFLICT_OF_INTEREST.md;
receives only authorized evidence needed for the appeal;
records conflicts, access, reasoning, and votes;
cannot be directed by a sponsor, commercial team, trainer, or original reviewer.

Founder and executive appeals require an external panel. If a suitable independent path cannot be formed, the disputed result cannot be represented as finally resolved.

For any future official human result, tier, or credential, the appeals pool must be appointed through the external-majority Commission’s protected process. A trainer, recruiter, staffing representative, sales lead, engagement owner, original reviewer, sponsor, or commercial beneficiary cannot decide the affected appeal. Loss of a non-conflicted external path leaves the result disputed or suspended; it does not transfer appeal authority to the founding steward.

7. Review standard

The appeal body reviews whether:

the correct released rules and versions were used;
material evidence was eligible, accurately represented, and properly attributed;
the rubric and critical gates were applied consistently;
conflicts and accommodations were handled;
the calculation is reproducible;
the decision was supported within stated uncertainty and limitations;
new evidence should instead trigger a new evaluation rather than alter the historic one.

The appellant should receive a meaningful opportunity to respond to material adverse information, subject to privacy, security, reference, and hidden-case protections.

8. Outcomes

The appeal body may:

uphold the decision;
correct a factual, disclosure, or calculation error;
remand for new non-conflicted review;
admit or exclude evidence under the released rules;
order a reasonable alternate demonstration;
change a dispute, suspension, verification, or revocation state;
require a new result event;
identify a benchmark defect for RFC and broader impact review.

The outcome must include the decision, reasons, rules and versions used, effective date, remaining limitations, and any further review path.

9. Fees and retaliation

The initial correction and appeal path should not charge a candidate a fee. Expedited commercial service cannot accelerate deliberation in a way that changes rigor or outcome.

Retaliation for a good-faith correction, appeal, accommodation request, conflict disclosure, or integrity report is prohibited.

10. Records and transparency

Appeal records are private and purpose-limited. Public reporting should aggregate appeal count, category, disposition, timeliness, score-impact class, and systemic remediation without identifying participants or revealing controlled cases.

If an appeal reveals a defect that may affect other results, the operator must conduct a documented impact analysis and notify affected participants where appropriate.

11. External rights

This process does not waive contractual, statutory, regulatory, employment, discrimination, consumer, privacy, or judicial rights. Participant terms must not misleadingly describe the benchmark appeal as the only available remedy.

12. Activation gate

No verified result, official score, public credential, suspension, or revocation may be issued until the project has:

named trained appeals officers and an independent reviewer pool;
a seated external-majority FDE Benchmark Commission and a conflict-safe appointment path for the appeals pool;
configured a private accessible filing channel;
approved conflicts, evidence-access, retention, and service policies;
tested correction, calculation replay, suspension, decision, notification, and audit workflows;
published participant-facing instructions and aggregate-reporting commitments.