Glossary
This glossary collects the terms used across the course, grouped into four areas: the architecture of sovereign records, governance and AI, Indigenous data sovereignty, and a shared vocabulary for governance risk. Definitions are written for a governance audience rather than a technical one — enough to follow the argument of each module and to use the words precisely in your own deliberations.
Sovereign-record architecture
- Sovereign record
- a record that carries its own provenance, policy, proof chain, verification state, and portable export path, rather than relying on a provider's assurances.
- Provenance
- the verifiable account of who authored, stewarded, or approved a record, and how it changed.
- Policy-carrying record
- a record that travels with its own rules on who may read, share, train on, export, or delete it.
- Proof chain
- a tamper-evident record of which governance boundaries a record crossed, and when.
- Verification state
- whether a record's current state is fresh, expired, mismatched, or unverifiable.
- Portable export
- the ability to take records out in a usable, verifiable form; the basis of real exit rights.
- Immutability
- changes are appended, attributable, and auditable rather than silently overwritten; not "nothing ever changes."
- Tamper-evidence
- the property that any alteration to a record can be detected.
- Append-only
- new entries are added; prior entries are not edited in place.
- Bilateral federation
- two sovereign tenants connect only for a specific, signed purpose, each keeping local authority and revocation power.
- Tenant isolation
- each organisation's data and governance rules are scoped and separated from every other's.
- Constitutional memory
- governance records treated as durable institutional memory rather than disposable office files.
- Audit-grade
- a record or chain strong enough to prove its integrity to an external reviewer.
- Deliberation record
- the trail of how a decision was formed: proposals, discussion, AI input, dissent, approvals.
- Attributable-AI record
- a record that keeps human reasoning separate from, and attributable against, any AI input, with a signature for non-repudiation.
Governance & AI
- Agentic governance
- the principle that governance must be enforced structurally, in the system's critical path, not left to AI discretion or after-the-fact policy.
- Guardian Agents
- oversight components that verify AI responses against a community's own records, monitor for drift, resist prompt attacks, and preserve human approval over changes.
- The six governance services
- BoundaryEnforcer, InstructionPersistenceClassifier, CrossReferenceValidator, ContextPressureMonitor, MetacognitiveVerifier, and PluralisticDeliberationOrchestrator: a control model distinguishing machine action, human instruction, and value-laden judgment.
- Human-in-the-loop
- a design where defined actions always require human sign-off.
- Value change
- a change to a community's rules, thresholds, or governance settings; kept under human authority.
- Exit rights
- the institution's ability to leave with its records intact, avoiding platform lock-in.
- Drift
- gradual divergence of an AI's behaviour from its intended grounding.
- Prompt attack
- an attempt to manipulate an AI through crafted input to override its instructions.
- Pluralism
- treating value differences as real and often non-reducible, rather than assuming one hidden optimisation target.
Indigenous data sovereignty
- Indigenous data sovereignty
- the right of indigenous peoples to govern the collection, ownership, and use of data about their people, lands, and culture.
- CARE Principles
- Collective benefit, Authority to control, Responsibility, and Ethics; a complement to the FAIR data principles that centres collective rights.
- Collective rights
- rights held by a community to define legitimate uses of data, distinct from individual end-user consent.
- Relational provenance
- meaning that depends on the relationships and context a record belongs within.
- Taonga
- a treasured thing; in data terms, culturally significant information held under guardianship.
- Kaitiakitanga
- guardianship and stewardship; an obligation to care for and protect, here applied to data.
- Koha
- a gift offered in reciprocity; here, a voluntary contribution toward the course's running costs.
- Tikanga
- correct customary practice; the protocols governing how matters are properly handled.
- Whakaaro
- a thought, opinion, or considered position contributed to a deliberation.
- Kāhui
- a collective or assembly; a consensus-based decision body.
- Mana motuhake
- self-determination; authority and autonomy retained by a community.
- Te Tiriti o Waitangi
- the Treaty of Waitangi; a foundational document in the relationship between the Crown and Māori in Aotearoa New Zealand.
- Whakapapa
- genealogy and lineage; the relational lineage connecting people and things.
Risk vocabulary
- Integrity risk
- records may be edited, overwritten, or summarised undetectably.
- Jurisdiction risk
- records may fall under foreign laws or provider obligations outside the organisation's control.
- AI-reuse risk
- sensitive material may feed model behaviour opaquely if the architecture is not sovereign.
- Contestability risk
- the institution may be unable to reconstruct why a conclusion was reached.
- Trust risk
- stakeholders may reasonably doubt the process was fair, complete, or faithfully recorded.
- Operator-dependence risk
- reliance on a provider that cannot be exited without loss.
- Due process
- the demonstrable fairness and completeness of how a decision was made.