Responsible AI & Governance Playbook (Risk, Ethics, Compliance)
- Executive
- Intermediate
- Template Included
Stand up a risk-tiered AI governance model, aligned to frameworks like the NIST AI RMF and EU AI Act, that speeds up low-risk AI work instead of slowing everything down equally.
How is this different from general enterprise risk management?
It's a specialized layer that plugs into existing enterprise risk and data governance functions rather than replacing them, adding AI-specific concerns — model bias, explainability, hallucination risk, autonomous decision-making — that general risk frameworks weren't originally built to assess.
Do we need to fully comply with the EU AI Act if we don't operate in the EU?
If you have no EU operations, customers, or data subjects, direct compliance may not apply, but the Act's risk-tier structure is widely used as a de facto industry standard and is a reasonable, defensible baseline to align to regardless — many U.S. and global regulators are converging toward similar risk-based frameworks.
How do we stop the high-risk review board from becoming a bottleneck?
Keep the four-tier system honest — the review board should only see genuinely high-risk use cases, which in most enterprises are a small fraction of the total inventory once tiering is applied correctly. If the board is reviewing dozens of cases a month, the tiering criteria are likely too conservative.
Who should have final authority to block a high-risk use case from launching?
The governance function needs real authority chartered by an executive sponsor (typically the CRO or General Counsel), not just an advisory voice — a governance board that can be overruled by a business unit VP with no escalation path isn't governance, it's a suggestion box.
What's the very first artifact we should build if we're starting from nothing?
The model and tool inventory. Every other part of this playbook — tiering, review processes, incident response — depends on first knowing what AI is actually in production, and most organizations are surprised by how incomplete their starting picture is.
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