AI Governance Starter Guide
Your team is already using AI — the only question is whether it's governed. Here's the one-week starter framework.
What does a minimum viable AI governance framework contain? Five elements, implementable in about a week: (1) a three-tier risk classification — green (go), amber (review first), red (don't) — applied to data types and task types; (2) a one-page acceptable-use policy per role, in plain language; (3) a tool approval list with data-handling terms recorded per tool; (4) human-review gates on client-facing, financial, and regulated outputs; and (5) a named owner and an escalation path for incidents and gray areas. Structure beyond this should be earned by scale, not installed by default.
Five elements, one week
Green / amber / red
Classify by data (public → internal → confidential → regulated) and by task (drafting → analysis → decisions). Green: proceed, no permission needed. Amber: human review before use. Red: not with AI, full stop. Most hesitation dies when people can see the tiers.
Per role, plain language
What tools are approved, what data may enter them, what must be reviewed, who to ask. If it doesn't fit on a page, it won't be read — and unread policy is theater.
Living document
Each approved tool with: what data it may touch, its training-data terms, who approved it, and when it's next reviewed. Shadow tools get evaluated and either approved or replaced — not just banned.
Non-negotiables
Anything client-facing, financial, legal, or regulated passes a human before it acts or ships. Log the review. This single rule prevents the majority of AI incidents that make the news.
A name, not a committee
One accountable owner (initially part-time), a simple incident path, and a monthly 30-minute review of new tools and gray areas. Committees come later, if scale demands them.
What kills governance programs
The 40-page policy nobody reads. The blanket ban that drives use underground. The approval committee that takes six weeks to say maybe. The framework copied from a bank when you're a distributor. Governance earns adoption by being fast to comply with — clarity is the control, and the tiers do the heavy lifting.
Keep going
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