Decision Provenance in Practice

Contemporaneous Preservation

The defining feature of decision provenance is contemporaneity.

Relevant context, constraints and discretionary judgement are recorded at the point the decision occurs, rather than reconstructed later.

See Why Decision Reconstruction Fails.

Example: Organisational Decision

In a procurement or governance decision, decision provenance may preserve:

• the information available at the time
• material constraints or policies
• identified risks and trade-offs
• the decision outcome
• the decision-maker's recorded judgement

This does not require preserving every document, but it does require preserving the context that shaped the decision.

Example: AI-Assisted Decision

In an AI-assisted environment, decision provenance may additionally preserve:

• the system output presented to the human decision-maker
• relevant model version or configuration identifiers
• any override or deviation from system recommendation
• the human's discretionary reasoning

This preserves the interaction between human judgement and system output.

See AI-Assisted Decisions and Evidentiary Risk.

Relationship to Logs and Audit Trails

Operational logs and audit trails may support provenance, but they do not replace it.

Logs record events. Audit trails support verification. Decision provenance preserves judgement and context.

See Decision Logs, Audit Trails and Provenance .

What It Is Not

Decision provenance is not:

• a mandatory regulatory regime
• a substitute for professional judgement
• a guarantee that a decision was correct

It is a structured method of evidentiary preservation.