How do I define the baseline I am comparing a new option against?

Describe the path, not a snapshot

A useful baseline answers one practical question: what is reasonably likely to happen by the chosen review date if you do not adopt this new option? Start with today's real conditions, then include ongoing commitments, expected outside changes, and actions you or others are already likely to take. Do not freeze the present and call that the alternative.

The 2026 Green Book defines business as usual as the expected outcome if current arrangements continue and a proposal is not implemented. It says this does not mean doing nothing, because people and organisations still act, and the current path carries its own costs, benefits, and risks. That is formal public-policy guidance; the low-stakes transfer is simply to compare a new path with a fair description of the path already unfolding.

Fill out the ANCHOR baseline card

ANCHOR is a Forever Free Compass framework, not an external research finding. Write one short line for each field and mark estimates or guesses as uncertain.

1. Actual starting position: note the relevant conditions, people, resources, obligations, and evidence as they are now.
2. No-new-option path: describe what you are likely to do if this proposal is not chosen; do not substitute an unrealistic ‘nothing changes’ story.
3. Commitments already in motion: include decisions, deadlines, habits, contracts, relationships, or work that will continue unless deliberately changed.
4. Horizon: choose the same review date or period for the baseline and every new option.
5. Outside changes: name plausible developments you do not control that could affect both paths, and label their uncertainty.
6. Resources, benefits, costs, and risks: record what the baseline uses, preserves, creates, or exposes instead of normalising it to zero.

Keep the comparison fair

Use the same objective, affected people, setting, criteria, and time horizon for the baseline and the new option. If the proposal is described in its best plausible case while the baseline is described in its worst plausible case, the comparison is biased before scoring begins.

The Green Book says a business-as-usual description should be fair and reasonable; overstating its costs and risks makes action look unduly attractive, while understating them makes action look unduly unattractive. It also recommends showing each path's costs and benefits in absolute terms rather than treating the baseline as zero. For personal reflection, this means writing both paths in parallel with the same level of detail.

Separate a planning baseline from proof

The 2026 Magenta Book recommends identifying baseline evidence before implementation and explains that estimating additional impact may require a credible counterfactual: what would have happened in the intervention's absence. The CDC framework likewise starts by assessing context and describing needs, inputs, activities, outcomes, and contextual factors before gathering credible evidence.

Your ANCHOR card is not that kind of causal estimate. It is a transparent planning comparison. A later difference between the chosen path and the written baseline does not prove that the choice caused the difference; outside events, inaccurate assumptions, and other actions may also explain it.

Use a proportionate boundary

For a low-stakes, reversible choice, six lines may be enough. Add detail only where a plausible assumption could change the comparison. If the decision affects another person's rights or consent, safety, employment, housing, legal position, finances, or health, keep duties and qualified advice outside the score and do not rely on a personal baseline card as evidence of safety or acceptability.

CDC's context guidance includes people, place, ongoing conditions, resources, and decision roles. Those reminders help prevent a baseline from erasing who is affected or what conditions shape the choice, but they do not turn ANCHOR into a validated evaluation tool.