# Whole Picture platform scope and information architecture

Release: `CSKE-Whole-Picture-v4.12.0-20260825`

Status: implementation specification for the additive v4.12 release. It does not supersede, delete, publish, or deploy any earlier release.

## Direct answer

Whole Picture is the public doorway into an evidence-controlled civic decision system for all of Wilbraham. It begins with questions residents recognize, then connects each question to the Town's direction, current work, assets, money, authority, alternatives, consequences, uncertainty, sources, and later results.

It is not only a financial dashboard, a file catalog, or a Wilbraham Center project. Wilbraham Center is the place where the work began and a useful case study in identity and irreversible change. The platform boundary is the whole Town.

## Governing promise

> CSKE helps a community understand what it is trying to accomplish, what residents are experiencing, what has already been entrusted or committed to it, what the evidence shows, what choices are available, what each choice would require—and what today's decision will leave for the next generation.

The shorter doorway statement is:

> A community decision looks like one question. Underneath it is an entire connected story. Whole Picture helps us see that story before we choose what happens next.

## The connected decision story

Every supported journey should make it possible to move through the same sequence without requiring the reader to understand the database:

1. What are we trying to accomplish?
2. What are residents experiencing now?
3. What has already been entrusted, authorized, or committed?
4. What work, services, assets, money, and obligations are connected?
5. What choices are available, and what would each require?
6. What would each choice change—for households, services, place, identity, and the future?
7. What is known, missing, uncertain, reversible, or impossible to recreate?
8. Who decides, who delivers, what will be measured, and when can the Town correct course?
9. What happened afterward, and what should the next decision learn?

## Public information architecture

### Level 1 — Whole Picture

The new `index.html` is the townwide front door. It answers what the platform does and provides a small number of clear ways forward:

- follow a resident question;
- see how a decision connects from direction to results;
- explore the reusable evidence rooms;
- inspect the comprehensive inventory and source controls.

### Level 2 — Guided resident journeys

- `resident-story.html` — Why does my tax bill feel so much higher?
- `growth-and-identity.html` — Can Wilbraham change, invest, and grow without losing things residents value and cannot recreate?
- `town-finances.html` — What is the Town already carrying, and what choices are coming toward the same household bill?
- `decisions-and-scenarios.html` — How can residents compare alternatives before a choice is treated as ready?

### Level 2 — The connected civic system

- `strategy-to-results.html` — purpose, mission, outcomes, objectives, measures, master plans, decisions, delivery, results, and learning;
- `portfolio-assets-and-work.html` — services, Run-the-Town work, Change-the-Town work, portfolio/program/project, assets, lifecycle, capital needs, and future obligations;
- `roles-and-decisions.html` — decision rights, recommendations, authorizations, delivery, accountability, gates, and institutional memory.

### Level 2 — Reusable evidence and comprehensive inventory

- `reports/index.html` — all current rewritten report routes;
- `comprehensive-inventory.html` — source-by-source and business-function doorway, including preserved materials, reviewed platform references, traceability, data assessment, defects, refresh status, and unresolved evidence;
- `evidence/portal-v3.7.0/` — untouched preserved reporting portal.

### Level 3 — Evidence drill-through

The existing parameterized reports in `reports/report.html?id=…` remain the Level 3 reading depth. Every distinct preserved report keeps a current counterpart and an untouched original link at the bottom.

## Reading pattern on every new page

The pages use progressive disclosure in this order:

1. Direct answer.
2. What the evidence or current work shows.
3. Why it matters.
4. Limitations, uncertainty, and unresolved questions.
5. Sources and methodology.

The visible language stays resident-readable. Specialist definitions, formulas, provenance, and control records remain available through deliberate drill-through.

## Decision dimensions

Every mature decision journey should be able to represent these dimensions without pretending that every dimension is already populated:

- community purpose, mission, identity, and desired outcomes;
- resident experience and service consequences;
- strategy, master plans, objectives, and measures;
- current services and recurring obligations;
- portfolio, program, project, and follow-up work;
- assets, parcels, buildings, software, data, condition, lifecycle, and capital needs;
- operating income, recurring bills, one-time resources, reserves, debt, levy, and household effects;
- authority, roles, recommendations, votes, implementation ownership, and accountability;
- alternatives, timing, affordability, executability, risk, dependencies, and reversibility;
- history, place, civic memory, and things that may be impossible to recreate;
- evidence, provenance, freshness, assurance, conflicts, missingness, and data quality;
- results, lessons, correction points, and institutional memory.

## Place and identity boundary

The public wording must not imply that Wilbraham Center is the platform's geographic or civic boundary. The platform asks what a choice means for the whole Town while ensuring that the distinctive value and lived experience of each place are not made invisible.

The Wilbraham Center materials and photographs may be used as an origin story or named case study. They must not be described as a complete visual representation of all Wilbraham.

## Evidence boundary

The strategy, portfolio, role, asset, scenario, and learning-framework materials are reviewed platform references. They strengthen the architecture and identify future reporting connections; they are not silently promoted as current, complete, Town-adopted, or database-normalized facts.

Where a connection is conceptual, the page says so. Where accepted query contracts exist, the current report continues to query them through the governed read-only refresh. Missing remains unknown, never zero.

## Draft, review, and mark boundary

Every public template carries Sherie's exact working-draft notice: this is a CivicSS analytical working draft, not an official Town or Finance Committee report; it is for discussion and review; Sherie has not independently audited or certified the source data; and official presentation must wait for the applicable Town review and approval process, including Finance Committee review when applicable. The notice is small, quiet, and outside the primary storytelling hierarchy.

`CivicSS™` and `CSKE™` are shown as working project identifiers. No federal-registration claim is made and `CivicSS®` is prohibited in this release.

## Preservation decision

Release v4.11.0 remains untouched. Its former `index.html` is copied into v4.12 as `town-finances.html`; the resident story, all 30 report routes, all preservation links, evidence files, source controls, calculations, current snapshots, and refresh scripts remain present. The v4.12 front door adds structure above them.