What is a governance event?
A governance event is any action that changes the compliance state of an AI system: initial registration, screening completion, classification decision, obligation mapping, evidence submission, supervisor approval, override, rejection, re-screening trigger, or corrective action.
Each event is attributed to a named person, timestamped, and connected to the governance record. The sequence of governance events for an AI system is its governance history — and the basis for reconstructable audit-ready traceability.
Key points
- Governance events are the atomic units of the governance chain. Each event changes the system's compliance state in a defined way.
- Every event has a type (screening, approval, override, re-screening), a person (who acted), a timestamp (when), and a context (on what basis).
- Events are immutable once recorded. The governance history cannot be rewritten — only extended with new events.
- Some events are triggered by people (screening, approval). Others are triggered by the system (legal-change notification, evidence expiry). Both are governance events.
- The event log is the raw material of the audit trail. Traceability is the ability to read the event sequence and reconstruct the decision path.
Why it matters
Without the concept of governance events, compliance is a state without history. An AI system is either "compliant" or "not compliant" — but there is no record of how it got there. Governance events create the history: every step, every decision, every change is recorded as a discrete, attributed event. This is what makes compliance not just a claim but a verifiable, reconstructable process.
How EAB approaches this
Every action in EAB produces a governance event in the audit trail. The governance chain of custody is the ordered sequence of these events. Versioned Records create compliance snapshots at key events. The Executive Cockpit shows event-level activity across the portfolio.