Decision Provenance in Practice
At a Glance
Decision provenance is not a workflow or compliance checklist.
It is a structured approach to preserving decision context, judgement and outcome at the time a decision is made.
This page outlines how that preservation can operate 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.
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.
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.
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.