Sludge audit
A systematic review of a process to find and remove the friction that blocks people from what they want or are owed.
What it means
A sludge audit is a structured examination of an existing process — an application, a renewal, a cancellation, a benefits claim — to identify every point of excessive friction (confusing forms, redundant steps, hard-to-find information, burdensome verification) and to quantify the time, money, and psychological cost it imposes. The aim is to distinguish justified friction (a deliberate cooling-off step) from sludge that simply deters people, often the most vulnerable, from acting in their own interest or claiming entitlements. It typically maps the user journey, counts steps and fields, and estimates drop-off, then prioritizes fixes. Sunstein argues governments and firms should conduct them routinely, much as they do cost-benefit analysis. It matters because sludge is pervasive and largely invisible until measured, and removing it is frequently a higher-leverage, more equitable intervention than adding any new nudge.
Examples
An agency's sludge audit of its benefits form finds 40 fields and three notarized documents; cutting these to a pre-filled one-page form sharply raises take-up among eligible families.
A retailer walks its own returns process and counts what a customer actually does: two emails, a printed form, a trip to a depot. A prepaid label in every box removes all three.
A university maps what a student must do to claim a hardship grant and finds the form asks twice for information the university already holds. Deleting those fields lifts applications from the poorest students.
First described in Cass Sunstein (2019).