The Decision Assurance Council.
An independent, vendor-neutral body whose mission is to establish and steward Decision Assurance as an open discipline — its standard, its vocabulary, and its body of knowledge — so any organization can decide well, and prove it, without surrendering human judgment.
Three open artifacts, one shared discipline.
The standard
The Decision Assurance Levels (DAL) — the open specification that grades decisions by consequence and prescribes the required assurance and autonomy at each level. Versioned and maintained by the Council.
The lexicon
The canonical definitions of the discipline — Decision Assurance, Decision Control, the decision system of record, and related terms — so the field shares one language.
The body of knowledge
Reference practices, maturity guidance, case patterns, and — over time — anonymized, aggregated evidence on what works. Forthcoming, as working groups convene.
Five commitments, stated up front.
Open
The standard and lexicon are public and freely usable.
Vendor-neutral
No single vendor controls the standard; implementers compete on products, not on owning the definition.
Evidence-based
Guidance is grounded in research and outcomes, not assertion — consistent with the discipline's own honesty about what artificial intelligence can and cannot do.
Practitioner-led
The people who run real decision-making bodies shape the standard — not analysts or vendors talking at them.
Cross-industry
Architecture, risk, audit, finance, healthcare, and government perspectives — to avoid any single field's blind spots.
Changed only through an open, versioned process.
The Council practices the assurance it preaches: every change to the standard is proposed, drafted, opened for comment, ratified, and dated — in public.
- Propose A member proposes a change through the open process.
- Draft A time-boxed working group drafts or revises the artifact.
- Comment The draft opens for public comment across industries.
- Ratify A cross-industry Steering Committee ratifies the version; vendor representation is capped.
- Release A dated release is published, with all rationale and version history public.
Structure
A Founding Chair convenes the founding phase; a small, cross-industry Steering Committee ratifies versions and admits working groups; working groups draft specific artifacts; members participate, review, and adopt.
Membership
Open to individual practitioners and organizations. Vendor members are welcome and expected — but disclosed, with vendor influence on the Steering Committee capped. Conflict-of-interest disclosure is recorded for those who steward the standard.
The Council only confers legitimacy if it is not a marketing arm.
So we state the founding contribution plainly, and we build the independence in rather than promise it.
A transparent founding contribution. The Decision Assurance Council was founded and seeded by Arclave, Inc. and Andrew Guitarte. Arclave is a reference implementation of the standard — one implementer among many — and participates through the same open process as anyone else. It does not own the standard, the lexicon, or the governance, and it does not control ratification. See arclave.com.
Separate identity and home
The Council lives at decisionassurance.org, with its own governance, distinct from any vendor site.
One member among many
Arclave implements the standard and may propose changes through the open process; it holds no special authority over ratification.
Capped vendor influence
No vendor — Arclave included — holds a controlling share of the Steering Committee.
The competition is invited
Decision Intelligence and governance-platform vendors are welcomed. A standard adopted by rivals is a real standard, not a campaign.
Neutral funding
Founding support is disclosed; the Council moves toward diversified, non-vendor-dominated funding, with sponsorship caps.
A pre-committed transition
The Founding Chair commits to transitioning toward an elected or independent chair as the Council matures — a stated neutrality milestone, not an open-ended tenure.
The Founding Chair is also the chief executive of the founding contributor. We disclose that openly, cap his control, and time-box his chairmanship. These safeguards are not optional decoration; if they are not genuinely honored, the Council backfires — so they are written down here in advance.
We partner with, rather than replace.
Decision Assurance crosses disciplines, so the Council seeks liaison relationships with established professional organizations across enterprise architecture, business architecture, and the risk and audit professions — so the discipline is recognized across fields rather than siloed in one.
What we hold to be true.
The founding document of the Decision Assurance movement. We still prize speed, judgment, and human wisdom. We simply refuse to lose the proof.
- Every consequential decision deserves a record — who decided, why, what was weighed, and what was chosen.
- The rigor of your assurance should match the cost of being wrong. Aviation grades its software that way; our decisions deserve the same.
- The rules that must never break belong in the system, not in someone's willpower.
- A claim with no evidence is a guess. Ground every decision in something a stranger could check.
- Dissent is data. Record the objection, not only the verdict.
- Memory is an asset. A decision you can find, learn from, and defend pays you back for years.
- Assurance serves everyone — the maker, the auditor, the customer, and the public.
- Proof is not bureaucracy. Done well, it sets people free to decide with confidence.
Decision Assurance never takes the decision away from you. You decide. It proves you decided well.
Founding signatory: Andrew Guitarte — and every practitioner who refuses to decide in the dark.
Help steward the discipline.
If you lead a decision-making body and these principles describe how you already think, we would like you among the founding endorsers.