The Limitations of Documents

After this lesson, the reader should understand:

• 01Distinguish a document's content from its behaviour.
• 02Explain why digitisation is not the same as computability.
• 03Identify the properties a governance artifact needs that a document lacks.

A procurement threshold

A procurement policy states that contracts above a threshold require competitive tender. Why can two officers reading the same clause reach different outcomes?

The clause omits the inputs. It does not state whether the threshold applies per contract, per supplier, or per financial year; whether the figure is gross or net; or what happens to an option to extend. Each officer supplies the missing inputs from experience, and each supplies them differently. The disagreement is not about the rule — it is about the unstated interface to the rule, which a document has no way to declare.

• Is a well-drafted document simply an under-specified program?
• What is lost when prose is replaced with structure?
• Where should the authoritative text live once an artifact exists?

Take one clause and specify its interface.

1. 01Write the clause verbatim.
2. 02List every input it silently assumes.
3. 03State the type and source of each input.
4. 04Note which assumptions the drafter would need to confirm.

• Document engineering and legal XML standards.
• Rules as code — early government pilots and their limits.
• Specification theory — completeness and under-determination.