What do you call documents and other material serving as the basis for a decision?

Question

In my language, we have a word – beslutsunderlag – for documents and other material that are used as a basis for decisions (generally decisions made by an authority of some sort). For instance: when a company is about to hire a new member of staff, they would use applicants' CVs, interviews etc as "beslutsunderlag" for deciding whom to hire. When a company is considering terminating one of their local branches, they use financial reports, customer surveys etc as "beslutsunderlag" for their decision. And so on.

When I look up beslutsunderlag in bilingual dictionaries (tyda.se and bab.la) I get decision basis, which is the exact literal translation of beslutsunderlag (beslut – decision; underlag – basis), but quite frankly, sentences such as the following sound rather unidiomatic to me, and when I google different versions of them, I get pretty much no hits:

From the decision basis, it is clear that...

The decision basis should include information about...

The committee will put together a new decision basis

In my quest for a proper translation, I've come across decision guidance documents (or DGDs), which seems to be used to some extent, but I'm not 100% sure it means the same thing as what I'm after.

So, my questions are:

1. Am I right that the above examples don't quite work?

2. Does decision guidance documents mean 'documents and other material collected by a decision-making body, upon which a formal decision will be based'?

3. If neither decision basis nor decision guidance documents works, what should I use instead?

Answer 1

Yes, you're right that a direct translation of "decision guidance documents" is not the best choice. It is certainly to-the-point, but since it's not an established or familiar phrase, its meaning isn't immediately obvious.

Unfortunately this is one of the many times that the best translation must do some rewording, rather than be very word-for-word. To the best of my knowledge there is no direct English corollary for "documents used as the basis for a decision" that fits all contexts generically. There are specialized terms for various contexts, though. For many of the instances you cite, "evidence" or "body of evidence" might be appropriate. "Supporting documents" can be appropriate when referring to less-important documents that accompany a more-important one ("please submit your resume and any supporting documents"). If the emphasis is on a collection of documents that have been brought together into a whole, "file" or "portfolio" are common. Here are some choices for specific scenarios:

• Interviewing a candidate for a job, to refer to the resume/cv/supporting documents: "Looking over your qualifications, I see..."
• Deciding to close a branch of a company: "In making this decision, please consider the file collected over the past year..." (This is another where "body of evidence" might make sense)