Governance Model (Layer 1)

Purpose

Define how standards are proposed, reviewed, adopted, versioned, and retired, with clear accountability and public reasoning.

Ethical Mapping

• A3 Justice: contestability, auditability, remedy in governance decisions
• A6 Participation: multi-stakeholder consultation and transparency
• A4 Trustworthiness: integrity of process and change control

Roles

• Maintainers: steward structure, enforce process, merge changes.
• Editors: curate language for consistency, maintain templates and cross-links.
• Contributors: propose issues and pull requests.
• Reviewers: technical, ethical, legal, and domain experts.
• Affected-party advisors: representatives from impacted communities and sectors.

Decision Principles

1. Evidence-first: changes must specify verifiable requirements and auditable evidence.
2. Risk-proportionality: higher-tier standards require stronger justification and review.
3. Transparency by default: rationale and decision logs are public unless legally constrained.

Process (Minimum)

1) Proposal

Any change begins as an Issue or PR that includes:

• purpose and scope impact
• axiom mapping (A1–A7)
• risk tier impact (Tier 0–3)
• compliance evidence expectations

2) Review

• Tier 0–1: at least one technical review and one governance review.
• Tier 2: at least two technical reviews + one affected-party advisor review.
• Tier 3: multi-stakeholder review panel; explicit dual-use and geopolitical risk review.

3) Adoption

Maintainers adopt by merge, recording:

• decision summary
• dissenting views (if any)
• migration guidance (when requirements tighten)

4) Versioning

This corpus uses semantic versioning:

• MAJOR: breaking compliance changes (tightening MUST, new Tier 3 obligations)
• MINOR: new standards or non-breaking expansions
• PATCH: clarifications, typo fixes, non-normative improvements

5) Deprecation & Retirement

Deprecated requirements MUST specify:

• replacement control(s) (if any)
• grace period by tier
• audit treatment during transition

Governance Evidence (Auditability of Governance)

The project MUST maintain:

• an append-only decision log (issues/PR history)
• a changelog for each standard document
• reviewer roles/affiliations disclosure (as feasible)

Traceability Table (Requirement → Axiom → Evidence)

Requirement / Control	Axiom(s)	Evidence Artifacts
Append-only decision log	A3, A4	issue/PR history, decision log
Per-document changelog	A4	standard-document change logs
Reviewer disclosure	A6	reviewer roles/affiliations disclosure
Tiered review thresholds	A3, A6	review records by tier

Change Log

• v0.2: Added Traceability Table and Change Log to conform to ETHICAL_TRACEABILITY.md and VERSIONING.md.