The SFR framework is in active Stage 1 Community Review.
Before a proposed standard can advance, it must be reviewed by the communities it will affect. This section explains the current status of that review, what kinds of feedback are being requested, how submitted feedback is processed, and what the framework does with what it receives. Community review is not a formality — it is the mechanism by which a proposed standard becomes a better standard.
The SFR framework currently occupies Stage 1 of its six-stage advancement path. Stage 1 is Community Review — the period during which the normative documents are made available to the broader community, feedback is solicited, and the framework's authors respond to substantive input before the framework can advance to Stage 2 (Independent Evaluation).
A framework that receives no external feedback during its community review period cannot honestly claim to have completed a community review. The goal of this section is to make participation as clear and low-friction as possible. No specialist knowledge is required to review the framework. Organizations that would procure against it, researchers who would use it, and practitioners who would apply it are exactly the reviewers needed.
The framework is ready to be reviewed. It is asking to be reviewed. Feedback — including criticism — is the point of this stage.
The authors of a proposed standard are the people least qualified to evaluate it in isolation. They wrote the definitions. They chose the criteria. They decided what to include and what to omit. Their understanding of the framework is necessarily shaped by the reasoning that produced it — reasoning that external reviewers do not share and are not bound by.
Community review introduces a different kind of knowledge: the knowledge of practitioners who must apply the framework to real systems in real contexts. A procurement officer who tries to use the Procurement Guidance against an actual RFP process will discover gaps that no internal review could find. A researcher who attempts to cite the framework in a peer-reviewed paper will identify ambiguities in the citation guidelines that only appear in practice. A rehabilitation clinician who reads the Medical Risk document will catch assumptions that are invisible to engineers.
Community review also provides the epistemic standing that the framework needs to make normative claims. A standard that has been reviewed only by its authors is an assertion. A standard that has been reviewed by relevant communities and has documented responses to substantive feedback is a proposal that has begun to earn its standing.
Finally, community review generates the documentation trail that formal standards bodies require before a proposed standard can be considered for ratification. The feedback registry, the changelog, and the known issues log are not administrative overhead — they are the evidence that a genuine review process occurred.
The framework is seeking feedback across seven categories. Each category represents a part of the normative corpus or its application context where external review is most needed.
Are the canonical definitions in Canonical Definitions clear, complete, and unambiguous? Do they align with usage in your field? Are there terms that need defining that are not yet defined?
Are the three classification tiers (In-the-Loop, Surface-Level, Out-of-the-Loop) clearly differentiated? Are there system types that the taxonomy does not accommodate? Is the classification derivation from criteria A, B, and C unambiguous?
Can the Evaluation Process be applied by someone who did not write it? Are the criteria clear enough to produce consistent determinations across independent evaluators? Are the evidence requirements achievable?
Is the Governance Framework structured appropriately for a proposed standard at this stage? Are the revision procedures clear? Are there governance mechanisms missing that would be required before formal ratification?
Are the adoption documents useful for your organization type? Are the implementation pathways accurately described? Is the procurement guidance practical for actual procurement processes?
Is the framework usable as a classification instrument for research? Are the citation guidelines appropriate for peer-reviewed publication? Are there methodological issues that would prevent the framework from being referenced in an academic context?
General comments on any aspect of the framework are also welcome. If your feedback does not fit a category, the General Comments category in the feedback form is the right place for it.
All feedback submitted through this section is processed through a defined workflow. The workflow is public. Every step is documented in the Feedback Registry.
Feedback is submitted through the Submit Feedback page. Required fields: organization, role, industry, category, feedback summary, and (if applicable) suggested change. Submissions are acknowledged within 14 days. An acknowledgment is not a disposition — it confirms receipt only.
Each submission is assigned a Feedback ID and categorized. The framework authors review the submission against the relevant normative documents. Where the submission identifies a genuine gap, ambiguity, or error, it is marked Under Review. Where the submission raises a point already addressed in the documentation, the existing treatment is identified and the submitter notified.
Each feedback item receives one of six dispositions: Accepted (change made as submitted), Accepted with Modification (change made in modified form), Declined (no change made, with documented reason), Deferred (change needed but not in current version), Open (under review), or Under Review (active review in progress). Dispositions are documented in the Feedback Registry.
Accepted changes are incorporated into the relevant normative documents and recorded in the Framework Changelog. The changelog entry identifies the feedback item that prompted the change, the pages affected, and a summary of what changed and why. Declined items are recorded with the reasoning for the decision.
Where accepted feedback is substantial enough to constitute a minor revision of the framework, the revision is versioned according to the policy in the Governance Framework. The version number is updated in all affected documents. The submitting organization or individual is acknowledged in the Community Contributors page if they consent to public acknowledgment.
The feedback workflow is not a black box. Every submission, every disposition, and every resulting change is publicly documented. Transparency is the minimum standard for a review process that is asking for community trust.
The following documents support participation in the community review process.
Structured feedback submission form with seven categories and required fields.
→Public log of all submitted feedback items, their status, and disposition.
→Chronological record of all framework changes, versions, and the feedback that prompted them.
→Publicly documented unresolved issues, limitations, and pending framework questions.
→Acknowledgment of organizations and individuals who provide substantive review.
→Stage 1 dashboard: organizations engaged, feedback received, items resolved, Stage 2 readiness.
→A proposed standard that does not invite criticism is not proposing a standard — it is asserting one. The SFR framework invites criticism because criticism is what makes it better. If the classification criteria are ambiguous, reviewers will find that ambiguity before it becomes embedded in procurement decisions. If the evidence requirements are impractical, reviewers will identify that before the framework is cited in research. If the definitions are imprecise, reviewers will catch that before the definitions are used to classify systems that people depend on.