Canonical decision record

One consequential decision. One governed, portable record.

A Decision Passport brings the frame, evidence, authority, resources, tradeoffs, commitments, review conditions, and outcome of one decision into a human-readable and machine-structured record.

By Evan Micheal FosterPublished July 15, 2026

Decision PassportDecision readinessDecision provenanceOrganizational memory

Core proposition

The schema, not the file format, is the product.

Public definition

Decision Passport.

A Decision Passport is a portable, human-readable, machine-structured, versioned record of one consequential decision, its readiness, rationale, commitments, review conditions, and outcome. It is bounded to a decision episode rather than an entire organization, software system, strategy, or project.

The Passport tests whether evidence, authority, capacity, funding, and accountability are sufficient or explicitly accepted by an authorized person. It also preserves alternatives, assumptions, uncertainty, value effects, burden, displaced work, dissent, exceptions, and the conditions under which the decision should be reviewed, suspended, or changed.

Minimum public schema

The fields required to reconstruct and review one decision.

Identity + frame

Decision ID, title, organization, sector, confidentiality, version, status, decision statement, scope, deadline, trigger, reversibility, and an explicit defer option.

Authority

Recommender, decider, approver, veto or consent authority, implementer, risk acceptor, escalation path, and conflicts that must be resolved.

Stakeholders + alternatives

Affected groups, participation, contestability, status quo, defer, feasible alternatives, rejected alternatives, and how the options were created.

Evidence + context

Source, date, owner, relevance, trust, uncertainty, sensitivity, access, material dissent, assumptions, and the relationship to the bounded decision.

Value + burden

Intended outcome, Five-Ledger effects, distribution of benefit and burden, non-negotiable guardrails, reporting work, coordination cost, and displaced service or operating work.

Resources + analysis

Budget, restrictions, timing, people, skills, capacity, dependencies, scenarios, reasoning, decision rule, confidence, and residual uncertainty.

Recommendation + commitments

Proposed choice, conditions, minority view, specialist qualifications, owners, actions, due dates, resources, evidence of completion, and escalation.

Review + governance

Review triggers and dates, monitoring, exception and incident routes, stop conditions, implementation state, outcomes, lessons, retention, access, deletion, legal hold, public-record status, and consent for aggregation.

Strategic difference

A decision record between a meeting document and an enterprise decision system.

Board portals manage meeting workflow. Strategy platforms manage objectives and progress. Decision-intelligence systems connect data, models, and recurring operational decisions. A Decision Passport addresses a different gap: whether an episodic, cross-boundary decision is institutionally ready and whether its rationale and commitments remain reviewable after approval.

The Passport can accompany a board item, procurement, grant, policy, capital allocation, program design, vendor approval, or novel AI use. It should export into existing document, board, ticketing, project, and governance systems rather than attempt to replace them.

One bounded decision rather than an organization-wide transformation.
Human-readable for boards, managers, specialists, and affected stakeholders.
Machine-structured for consistent export, retrieval, comparison, and later review.
Versioned so assumptions, dissent, conditions, commitments, and outcomes do not disappear after the meeting.
Portable across sectors and tools while preserving specialist authority and existing systems of record.

Evidence status

Designed capability now. Outcome and benchmark claims require validation.

The current public claim is architectural: the Decision Passport is designed to surface readiness gaps and produce a portable record with defined fields. IVA does not yet claim that the Passport universally reduces cycle time, rework, implementation failure, burden, or reversal, and it is not a validated benchmark.

Those performance claims require repeated cases, consistent practitioner use, baseline and follow-up measures, inter-rater reliability, criterion validation, version control, permissioned outcome evidence, and independent review. Negative or null results should change the schema rather than be hidden by marketing language.

Observe now: field completeness, unresolved conditions, named authority, source traceability, commitments, review triggers, and artifact reuse.
Test over time: decision cycle time, repeated meetings, major revisions, implementation slippage, unowned commitments, burden, exception closure, and outcome review.
Do not claim yet: validated prediction, normed readiness percentiles, universal superiority, legal compliance, certification equivalence, or guaranteed outcomes.

Applied architecture

One Decision Passport schema, applied through an ordered ladder.

The Decision Passport is the common record across the public readiness checks and every bounded IVA service. The rung changes the depth of review, record completion, implementation support, and stewardship. It does not create a different decision object.

The research architecture defines the sequence below. The commercial site is the sole source for current availability, verified scope, and pricing.

Entry