The difficulty of characterizing a public policy is known as a problem of indeterminacy. This article implements a proposal to overcome the indeterminacy from the policy design framework. The premise is that the combination of nodality, authority, treasure and organization instruments is a condition of public policies. The proposal is tested through a case study of the public policy «Borders for Prosperity» (Fronteras para la prosperidad) in force in Colombia since 2010. The investigation is based on the tracking and analysis of 37 policy instruments. As a result, we characterize Colombia's border policy as an articulated design of information, authority, treasure, and organization instruments. The advantages of this proposal over other methodologies are the viability of overcoming the problem of sources of information, of getting over the restrictions of the language of projects, the possibility of allowing authorities, control entities and beneficiaries to make the decisions, and the openness to new stages of analysis of causes and effects after determinations have been made.