Provenance decides whether your data is AI-ready
Everyone wants to point AI at their content repositories. Maura Dunn’s position in Episode 139 is simpler than that. A model can only be as trustworthy as the data feeding it. Provenance settles that question long before anyone builds a pipeline.
Records capture points settle provenance. These are the moments in a business process where an input becomes a record. Seventeen (17) steps later, the process has changed that input into something new. That is another capture point. Every copy, every hand-off, every transformation makes chain of custody harder to establish.
Content versus context
Our back file characterization approach documents the method while we build it. We do not hand a client a disposition report with no reasoning attached.
Consider a recommendation to destroy sixty (60) of seventy-five (75) files. That report is content. The folder structures, file properties, creation and modification dates, and security group access rights behind it are context.
Context gives the client something to react to. We can say we hold this level of confidence that these records align with your sales and marketing category. That category carries an end of fiscal year trigger and a five (5) year retention period. The client then makes the risk judgment. Without context, one answer survives a year later: “because Maura said so.”
What the Superfund SITREP got away with
We built the same principle into our records process mapping work.
The contrast comes from the US EPA Superfund program. A SITREP moved from field samples and a gas chromatograph printout to a typed memo in a drawer. Eventually it went into a box at the Federal Records Center. That process produced no interim record steps. In a paper world, it did not need to.
Engineering records capture points into the workflow
Digital process manipulates information continuously. So the workflow itself has to carry the capture points. Mark the inputs and the interim decision support drafts. Mark the comment responses where public comment periods apply, and the finals.
Automated workflow and document management version control make those records capture points easier to build than ever. Growing volume makes the discipline harder. Records prove what happened. That proof now doubles as the audit trail for whatever your AI does next.
Episode chapters
00:00:00 Open and welcome
00:00:34 Data belongs with its business process
00:00:54 Provenance, chain of custody, and copies
00:01:18 Reliable, accurate data before AI
00:01:57 Baseline inventory and its limits
00:02:38 Back file characterization
00:03:52 Showing your homework
00:03:59 Content versus context
00:04:47 Properties, dates, and access rights
00:05:22 Confidence levels against the schedule
00:06:04 Paper records and offsite sampling
00:06:54 Records process mapping
00:08:07 EPA Superfund SITREPs
00:10:00 Capture along the way, not at the end
00:11:00 Choosing your capture points
00:11:17 Public comment obligations
00:12:07 Records as evidence of what happened
00:13:38 Closing and creditsClosing block
What Counts is produced by TrailBlazer Consulting, LLC and hosted by Lee Karas and Maura Dunn. Learn more or reach out directly at info@trailblazer.us.com. Explore compliance-ready corporate training programs at the TrailBlazer Learning Academy. Read more from Maura at Maura’s Substack. Music by Jason Blake. Full disclaimer.