OPS.22:4.5 - Choose and enact the response under the actual authority

Use the findings to choose the smallest adequate response. Examples include correcting a report, completing deferred service, retaining a useful action, changing an assignment or provision, revising an irrelevant aim, improving a method, or obtaining a needed capability-development result. Select the method for that change rather than asking people to try harder regardless of the cause.

Where the consequence arrangement is itself producing distorted forecasts or easy targets, identify its operative rule and holder. MA.9 examines the account’s behavioral contribution; OCE.10 develops an authorized change in access, workload, incentives or consequences. An adviser can propose the change without being able to make it effective.

Keep the operating assessment separate from the applicable reward decision. Use its relevant findings under the actual rule and authority; where that rule prevents the intended response, return the required rule change or exception to its competent holder. A favorable operating assessment creates no payment right by itself, and a framework paragraph cannot waive an existing obligation. Capability development likewise needs its own evidence and work through HCD.

For an unwelcome forecast, obtain the authorized operating response while preserving the supported forecast and its earlier basis. Address a demonstrated concealment or unsupported claim on its evidence. Do not punish the numerical decrease alone, or award automatic credit merely for reporting it. Both shortcuts replace judgement with a different indicator.