What is a structured decision record?
A structured decision record captures what was decided about an AI system, by whom, on what basis, with what evidence, and under which version of the regulation — in a format that can be reconstructed at any later point.
It is the governance artefact that transforms a compliance discussion into a defensible, attributed, time-stamped decision. Without structured decision records, governance decisions depend on memory, email threads, or meeting notes — none of which satisfy audit-ready traceability requirements.
Key points
- A decision record must contain: what was decided, who decided, when, on what evidence basis, under which legal version, and what the alternatives or open questions were.
- The record is not the same as the outcome. An approved system and a rejected system both produce structured decision records — the record documents the governed process, not just the result.
- Decision records must be immutable once created. Subsequent changes create new records that reference the original, preserving the full decision history.
- Overrides, exceptions, and conditional approvals are decision records too. A supervisor who overrides a screening finding must have a structured record of the rationale.
- If it cannot be reconstructed, it cannot be defended. This is the core principle behind structured decision records.
Why it matters
Auditors do not ask whether a decision was made. They ask whether the decision can be reconstructed from the record. The distinction eliminates most informal governance approaches: a Slack message, a verbal approval, a checked box without context. A structured decision record answers the auditor's question completely — without requiring anyone to remember what happened.
How EAB approaches this
Every governance action in EAB produces a structured decision record. Screening creates a classification decision. Supervisor Approval creates an approval decision. Re-screening creates a re-evaluation decision. Each is attributed, timestamped, connected to legal-version anchoring, and stored as part of the reconstructable decision path.