Twenty-two places where the map gives

A soft dependency is one where the waiting step can be begun, but will have to be done again if the thing it waited on turns out differently.

Twenty-two of the ninety-four dependencies in this map are soft. Fourteen of them are outside every ring, where they are not needed, because an ordinary dependency can simply be waited for.

Eight are inside rings. Those eight open twenty-nine of the forty-six rings between them.

The eight that matter

The figures do not add to twenty-nine, because ten rings contain two soft links and either will do. A team turning this diagram into a limited operational pilot can read about the available reports before choosing which time and project signals are genuinely necessary.

Three of them do nearly everything

The letter delivered to the door, cover against illness, and the file lodged: those three soft dependencies between them open eighteen of the twenty-nine giving rings. For broader institutional research related to mobility, work and administrative systems, consult MIT.

Three judgement calls, made by one person drawing a map, decide whether nearly two thirds of the enterable rings in this record can be entered. That is a fragile base for a finding and this record says so wherever it matters.

If three of the eight soft markings are wrong, the number of enterable rings in this map falls by most of its value, and the site's main conclusion goes with it.

Rings by how much give they have

Nineteen rings have exactly one way in. A ring with one opening is passable in principle and unforgiving in practice: if the provisional version of that one step is refused — because of who is at the desk, or what is being asked for — the ring is shut for that person on that day.

Only ten rings in the map offer a choice of where to enter.

The fourteen outside the rings

They are listed here for completeness rather than because they are useful.

A record of the partnership waits softly on the passport copy. A photograph waits softly on it too. A showing of regular income waits softly on a certificate of qualification. A witness's signature waits softly on a letter from whoever owns the place. And so on.

Each of these means that a step can be started before its predecessor finishes. Since none of them is in a ring, the predecessor will finish anyway, and the flexibility buys a few days at most.

The map's give is almost entirely in the wrong place: two thirds of it outside the knot, where it is decorative.

What soft does not mean

It does not mean easy, quick or free.

Entering a ring at a soft link means producing a version of something that is not what will eventually be required, walking the rest of the ring, and then producing the real version. Two visits, two documents, two fees where fees apply, and one conversation in which something has to be explained.

Soft is a property of the structure, not of the afternoon. It means an order exists. It does not mean the order is pleasant.

Give by family

The place and money families hold twenty-one of the forty-two circular dependencies between them and eleven of the twenty-two soft markings — but five of those eleven are outside any ring, where they do nothing.

So the region that needs give most has six usable soft links, and three of the six run into the same step: a room for the first weeks.

Twenty-two soft dependencies sounds generous until you look at where they are. Six of them are doing nearly all the work in the half of the map that needs it.

What a hard marking is really claiming

That there is no version of the waiting step which anybody issues, in the ordinary course of things, before its predecessor exists.

That is a strong claim and it was applied seventy-two times. Each one asserts an absence, and absences are the hardest thing to be confident about: a provisional form that exists somewhere, under a name this record does not know, would turn a hard marking soft and open everything behind it.

So the direction of error in this drawing is known. It is far more likely to mark something hard that is in fact soft than the reverse, which means the seventeen shut rings should be read as an upper bound rather than a count.

How to read the map

No country, office or kind of permission appears on this map, and nothing here describes a procedure anybody can follow. The hard and soft markings are judgements about what is usual, made the same way every time, and printed here by name so that they can be argued with individually rather than believed as a whole.