The Importance, tractability, and neglectedness approach is the go-to hereustic for EA's.
The open philanthropy project approaches it like this:
“What is the problem?” = importance
“What are possible interventions?” = tractability
“Who else is working on it?” = neglectedness
I reckon it's a simplification of the rational planning model:
Intelligence gathering — A comprehensive organization of data, potential problems and opportunities are identified, collected and analyzed.
Identifying problems — Accounting relevant factors.
Assessing the consequences of all options — Listing possible consequences and alternatives that could resolve the problem and ranking the probability that each potential factors could materialize in-order to give a correct priority in the analysis.
Relating consequences to values — With all policies there will be a set of relevant dimensional values (for example, economic feasibility and environmental protection) and a set of criteria for appropriateness, against which performance (or consequences) of each option being responsive can be judged.
Choosing the preferred option — The policy is brought through from fully understanding the problems, opportunities, all the consequences & the criteria of the tentative options and by selecting a optimal alternative with consensus of involved actors.
What do you reckon?
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