Independent Governance Experiment Scorecard
Bound an oversight body's power, protect independence, and test legitimacy
- Difficulty
- Expert
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 8
- Confidence
- 98%
Feldman's scorecard treats independent oversight as a testable governance experiment rather than a symbolic board. Independence begins with structure: compensation must come through an external entity, reappointment cannot depend on the company, and members should not hold incentives such as company stock. The mandate should start with a narrow, important problem and enough power to matter, but not so much that the body can issue impossible or company-breaking orders. Representation must match the geographic scope of its decisions. Values are stated in advance, decisions and reasons are public, and the company promises implementation. Success is then judged through observable behavior: the body sometimes reverses the company, the company carries out decisions it dislikes, the public recognizes genuine independence, and other organizations imitate the model. Rubber-stamping, non-implementation, or perceived dependence are failure signals.
Origin
Feldman derived the scorecard from helping create Facebook's independent Oversight Board and watching its early decisions.
Core principles
- 01Oversight cannot be credible when the governed company controls incentives
- 02A new body needs bounded authority it can exercise in practice
- 03Global decisions require global representation
- 04Published reasons and stated values create legitimacy
- 05Independence must be observable through reversals and implementation
- 06Imitation is evidence that outsiders believe the experiment works
How to run it
- 1
Isolate member incentives
Route compensation through an independent entity and prevent the company from controlling reappointment.
Pro tip Audit equity, consulting, and future-employment incentives as well as direct pay.
Watch out Company stock or company-controlled renewal makes independence implausible.
- 2
Bound the mandate
Begin with an identifiable class of important decisions and define powers the organization can realistically honor.
Pro tip Start narrow enough to learn before expanding authority.
Watch out A body that can demand impossible action will be ignored or dismantled.
- 3
Represent the governed scope
Recruit members from the regions and perspectives affected by the body's decisions.
Watch out An American-only body cannot credibly make global decisions.
- 4
Declare values
State the values the body will pursue before individual controversies are decided.
Pro tip Connect each later decision explicitly to those values.
- 5
Publish reasons
Make decisions public and explain the reasoning, including why the body could be wrong.
Pro tip Use transparency to make independence inspectable rather than asserted.
Watch out Closed decisions and unexplained outcomes reduce legitimacy.
- 6
Test behavioral independence
Measure whether the body sometimes reverses the company rather than merely approving its choices.
Watch out Universal agreement with management is a rubber-stamp signal.
- 7
Verify implementation
Confirm that the company executes decisions it dislikes and publicly identify failures to comply.
Pro tip Publish a compliance record over an extended period.
Watch out Advice without implementation is not transferred decision power.
- 8
Watch public trust and imitation
Assess whether outsiders treat decisions as independent and whether other organizations adopt comparable power-sharing mechanisms.
Pro tip Treat imitation as a late signal, not a substitute for direct performance evidence.
In the wild
Facebook funded an independent trust that pays the Oversight Board, delegated a defined set of content and deplatforming decisions, and promised to implement its rulings. Feldman cites the Donald Trump decision as an early marker: the board said Facebook had acted incorrectly while allowing a properly made future suspension, and news coverage largely treated the ruling as independent.
→ The decision supplied an initial, incomplete signal that the body was neither controlled by Facebook nor merely rubber-stamping it.
Common mistakes
Letting the company control incentives
Equity compensation or company-controlled reappointment compromises the body's structural independence.
Giving unlimited power up front
An overbroad mandate can produce decisions the company cannot implement without violating its basic duties.
Making unexplained closed decisions
Without published reasons tied to prior values, outsiders cannot evaluate consistency or legitimacy.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for large organizations delegating a defined class of consequential decisions to an external or structurally independent body.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal for a body whose mandate is so broad that its decisions could make the underlying organization unable to operate lawfully or meet core duties.
From the transcript
“if the oversight board rubber stamps everything that facebook does it's not working”
“if you're making global decisions you need representation from all over the globe”
“transparency and giving reasons drives legitimacy non-transparency or failure to give reasons detracts from legitimacy”
From the episode
#540: Harvard Polymath Noah Feldman — Deep Focus for Hyper-Productivity, Learning 10+ Languages, Predicting the Future with History, the Possibilities (and Limitations) of DAOs, Lessons from the Iraq Invasion, Designing the Supreme Court of Facebook, the Virtue of Scholarship, and the Wild Life of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Noah Feldman