What’s New
In our v18.0 release, we’re excited to unveil a major enhancement to the AI Governance Lifecycle within our platform. The new Governance Workflow features more detailed stages and statuses to better support your AI Governance journey.
The goal of this release is to better support AI Governance decision making processes via,
- Configurable stages and statuses
- Granular review and approval options
- Improved clarity on milestones, decision points and pending actions
This guide outlines the changes in detail and offers an overview of the enhanced governance process introduced in the v18 release. The following topics are covered in this document.
- Granular Governance Stages & Statuses
- Creating & Accessing New Governance Stage
- Editing an existing Stage
- Deleting a Stage
- Advancing Use Case through
Granular Governance Stages & Statuses
Use Case Governance lifecycle in Credo AI now supports configurable Stages and Statuses within those Stages. Admins have the ability to create custom Lifecycle Stages in the platform. The updated Governance Lifecycle with one or more distinct stages is designed to better align with the natural progression of AI development and deployment. The stages can be configured to reflect your unique AI Governance workflow.
A Use Case can go through 5 distinct Statuses in each stage. These Statuses encompass all the data collection, data validation and approvals needed by a Use Case to clear the Stage. The 5 statuses are,
- “Assessing”
- “Reviewing Assessment”
- “Collecting Evidence”
- “Reviewing Evidence”
- “Cleared”
Typically, when a Use Case is in “Assessing” Status (of a Stage), it means that Business User or Stakeholder(s) must provide updated answers to Questionnaires or Metadata fields for review. Once this data is provided, Use Case moves to “Reviewing Assessment” Status. The Use Case Reviewer or Admin reviews the information and approves or rejects the review.
If approved, Use Case then proceeds to “Collecting Evidence” Status. At this point, the Reviewer or Admin may decide to update the Risk Profile of the Use Case by introducing or removing Risk Scenarios and associated Controls. Reviewer may also introduce additional Credo AI provided Policy Packs into the Use Case based upon review of initial Questionnaire and Metadata. For example, if Business User responses to the Questionnaire indicate that the Use Case will impact EU based users, then Reviewer may decide to introduce Credo AI’s EU AI Act Policy Pack for a more accurate and thorough Governance workflow.
Finally, Business User provided Evidence is reviewed in the “Reviewing Evidence” Status, before Use Case is cleared to proceed to the next Governance Stage. Reviewer or Admin does this by approving the Evidence Review and moving the Use Case to “Cleared” status.
Note:
- Immediately after v18.0 release, every Use Case in Credo AI will have 2 stages - “Intake” and “Governance”. These 2 stages are immutable; however, admins will be able to rename these stages as well as add intermediate stages. Admins can also add additional stages using the Stages API.
A representative list of Governance stages & their purpose is given below:
|
Sequence |
Representative Governance Stage |
Purpose |
|
1 |
Intake |
For governance decisions & approvals relating to AI Use Case submission, feasibility assessment, Prioritization, Scoring & Stakeholder review. One of the outputs from this stage would be that the AI Use Case is approved for Pilot. |
|
2 |
Pilot (Optional stage) |
Review of technical feasibility and value of the AI Use Case.Governance decisions here may touch on reviewing simple baseline AI models, access data quality, evaluate early metrics such as accuracy, precision, response time, and gather early feedback from stakeholders. One of the outputs from this stage would be that the AI Use Case is approved for Development. |
|
3 |
Development (Optional stage) |
For governance of the AI use case as it is developed and prepared for production use. This stage may focus on decisions and approvals related to full-scale model testing, validation, testing with production data, evidence from bias audit & explainability reviews etc.The final step in this stage would be approving Use Case for Production use. |
| 4 |
Governance |
For a final review before approving Use Case for Production deployment, as well as for tracking Continuous Governance. |
Within each stage, we’ve added granular review statuses to give teams clearer visibility into the governance state of their AI use cases. This refined structure provides a more detailed and flexible framework for tracking progress, surfacing bottlenecks, and ensuring that responsible AI principles are continuously applied throughout the Use Case lifecycle.
When a Use Case enters a new Stage, it’s assigned the “Assessing” status. The Use Case progresses through all statuses and associated reviews within a stage before reaching “Cleared” status and moving on to the next Stage in the Governance Workflow.
|
Sequence |
Status |
Tasks to be Done |
|
1 |
Assessing |
Update MetadataAnswer Questionnaire |
|
2 |
Collecting Evidence |
Provide evidence against risk controlsProvide evidence against stand-alone controls |
|
3 |
Cleared |
Progress Use Case to next stage |
Use Case Progression through the Governance Lifecycle
Use Case progression from one status to the next status within a stage is represented below:
Use Case progression from one stage to the next stage is represented below. Note that some statuses are grayed out to indicate that those statuses are not applicable to the specific stage.
Example workflow
Creating New Governance Stages
Note:
- The v18.0 release supports creating new Governance Stages via API calls. Self-service option for Stage creation will be introduced in a later release.
- There is no impact to existing Use Case when adding new Stages
Following API call is used to create a Governance Stage: POST /api/v2/workflow_stages
Refer to the Credo AI API documentation (workflow_stages) for detailed information on the API signature and return codes.
When invoking the above API call, you must:
- Specify the parent Stage in the API call. Stages in Credo AI are arranged in a linear sequence. Use Cases follow this linear Governance Workflow sequence. The new stage is placed immediately after the parent stage in the sequence of stages.
- Specify which statuses are applicable or active in that stage
Once a new stage has been introduced, it’ll be visible under the “Stages” menu option as shown below:
Editing an Existing Governance Stage
The following API call is used to update an existing Governance Stage: PATCH /api/v2/workflow_stages/{id}. First, invoke the GET /api/v2/workflow_stages API to get a list of all existing Stages, and copy the relevant Stage ID for use with the PATCH API.
Refer to the Credo AI API documentation (workflow_stages) for detailed information on the API signature and return codes.
When invoking the above API call, you must:
- Specify the parent Stage in the API call.
- Specify updated name for the Stage. This name is displayed in your Use Case’s UI.
- Specify which statuses are applicable or active in that stage
The updated Stage details will be visible under the “Stages” menu option.
Note:
- You cannot disable a Status if one or more Use Cases are currently in that Status. Update the Use Case(s) to another Status before disabling the specific Status.
- There is no impact to Use Cases when renaming an existing Stage
Deleting a Governance Stage
The following API call is used to delete an existing Governance Stage: DELETE /api/v2/workflow_stages/{id}. First, invoke the GET /api/v2/workflow_stages API to get a list of all existing Stages, and copy the relevant Stage ID for use with the DELETE API.
Refer to the Credo AI API documentation (workflow_stages) for detailed information on the API signature and return codes.
Note:
- You cannot delete a Stage if one or more Use Cases are currently in that Stage. Update the Use Case(s) to another Stage & Status before deleting the required Stage.
Configuring Governance Statuses
We have updated the Credo AI sidebar to include an additional “Stages” option, accessible to Admins. This option displays all the stages configured in your Credo AI tenant. For example, stages “Development”, “Production”, “Operation and Monitoring” have been configured in the image displayed below. All Use Cases in the tenant will follow these stages.
As mentioned earlier, each stage includes “Assessing”, “Collecting Evidence” and “Cleared” statuses by default. Admins will be able to turn-on & turn-off specific statuses for each stage by using the "Stages" APIs mentioned in previous section.
In the image below, “Assessing” and “Cleared” statuses are active and “Collecting Evidence” is inactive in the “Development” stage. As Use Cases proceed through this Governance workflow, they will skip the “Collecting Evidence” step in the “Development” stage, and directly go from “Assessing” to “Cleared” status.
Updates to Use Case Registry View
Use Case registry view is being updated to display the new governance stages and statuses in a new column. You can see the stage and status displayed against each Use Case as shown in the image below.
You will also be able to filter Use Cases by their stage and status. Click on the “Options” button to open the “Filter by” sidebar. You can select values for “Lifecycle stage” and/or “Governance status” to view the corresponding Use Cases. The “In review” filter will further select and display Use Cases that are in one of the Review phases. For example, to see Development Use Cases in Assessment Review, select “Development” stage, “Assessing” status and “In-review” option.
Update to Use Case Overview Section
The Use Case UI has been updated to show granular Governance stages, statuses and an updated “Submit for review” button. When a Use Case is first submitted, it will be assigned to the first stage and first active status by default. E.g., if the first stage is “Development” and first active status is “Assessing”, new Use Cases will be assigned this stage and status.
You will be able to see Use Case stage in the “Lifecycle stage” section and Use Case status in the “Next step” section. These sections will display updated information as the Use Case proceeds through the Governance lifecycle.
The button in the top-right corner will display “Submit for review” if the Use Case is in “Assessment” or “Evidence Collection” statuses. Business users will provide necessary information and/or evidence and click this button to move the Use Case forward to “Assessment review” or “Evidence review” status. When Use Case is in one of the Review statuses, the button will display “Complete Review”. Either an Admin or Reviewer will click the button and complete the Use Case review.
Use Case Governance Statuses
A few illustrative examples of new Use Case Governance statuses are displayed below.
Use Case in “Assessing” status
Governance view when the user has answered the questionnaire and submitted Use Case for Assessment Review.
Reviewer has completed review of the Use Case moved it to next step “Collecting Evidence”
Use Case has successfully gone through all reviews in a stage and is ready to progress to the next stage.
Completing a Review
A Use Case can now go through multiple reviews during its Governance lifecycle. Reviewers will confirm reviews via a modal dialog box, select a review decision and optionally, leave a comment.
Updates to Overview Dashboard
The following sections of the Credo AI dashboard are being upgraded to showcase additional information:
- Use case governance progress
- Most valuable use cases
- Average review time by month
The “Use Case Governance Progress” section will display Use Case count broken down by their stage and status. The “Most valuable use case” section now includes the current stage of the use case for additional context. To improve readability, the “Use Case count by risk classification” section will be relocated to the top-right corner. “Average review time by month” will present a summarized view of reviews across all stages configured in your Credo AI tenant.
Migrating Existing Use Cases to New Governance Workflow
During Go-Live, existing Use Cases will be migrated to the new Governance Workflow as follows. Please contact your Credo AI Customer Success representative if you’d like additional information.
|
Current State |
New Stage |
New Status |
Under Review |
|
If Use Case is in Intake |
|||
|
Under Review: No |
Intake |
Assessment |
No |
|
Under Review: Yes |
Intake |
Assessment |
Yes |
|
If Use Case is in Governance |
|||
|
Under Review: Yes |
Governance |
Collecting Evidence |
Yes |
|
Under Review: No |
Governance |
Collecting Evidence |
No |
The default Stage configuration is given below. You can enable or disable the Statuses via the “Stages” tab in Credo AI user interface.
|
Workflow Stage |
Assessment Required |
Evidence Collection Required |
|
Intake |
Yes |
No |
|
Governance |
Yes |
Yes |