The first public good, counting, the health authority, standing administration, the front counter, and the audit and statistics that check them.
Build the thing everyone needs and nobody owns — and settle who pays for it.
Needs first: Decide how you decide, Find and hold water (Water), Boundary and tenure
Count every person and dwelling as at one date, so that decisions about food, water, schools and shares start from a number rather than a guess.
Needs first: Writing and the durable record (Knowledge), Arithmetic for everyone (Knowledge), The first public good
Give someone the standing, the information and the power to act on disease before it spreads.
Needs first: Germ theory and antisepsis (Health), Plot, street and block (Settlements), Make water safe (Water), Published rule and the court
Run each public function through a department with one written mandate, staffed by officials hired on merit who serve whoever is lawfully in charge.
Needs first: Published rule and the court, Teach the next generation (Knowledge), Double entry and the auditable enterprise (Economy), Count before you administer
Give every person one place to get any public service, with published requirements, fee and deadline, and someone independent to complain to.
Needs first: Standing departments and a civil service, The register: land, birth, company, Telegraph (Computing)
Give the public numbers it can trust about what government spends and achieves, produced and checked by offices the government cannot instruct.
Needs first: Standing departments and a civil service, Double entry and the auditable enterprise (Economy), Count before you administer, Computing (Computing), Priority by publication (Knowledge)
Every guide, build, reference sheet and book reached from the steps above.
Surface water is a treatment problem every single day. Groundwater, reached and sealed properly, is a treatment problem once.
Level 0Every public institution an advanced civilisation runs, in the order a rebuilding one can found them: what each is for, when it becomes possible, and the rules that keep it honest, useful and no bigger than its job.
Level 0The distance between a latrine and a well, a bar of soap, and a covered pit prevent more deaths than every hospital on the ladder combined.
Level 3The two dozen that decide who lives where there is no doctor: what each does, how it spreads, what kills it and which step stops it.
Level 1Normal pulse, breathing, temperature and blood pressure; the signs that mean danger in a child; and how much water a body needs.
Level 3Life from the cell up: the human body, microbes and immunity, inheritance and epidemics. Each result with what it lets you do and who first found it.
Level 6What can be computed and how fast, how signals carry information without error, how secrets are kept, and how machines learn from data: each result with what it lets you do and who first found it.
Drawn overview sheets, each with its corrections printed under it. They orient; they are never the thing you identify from.
