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Leadership guide/Operations & assurance
What exactly are we authorizing?
Download the guide↓Editable working records→
Classify the use in its actual setting. The same tool can support routine drafting or a consequential decision. A vendor subscription is not approval for every possible use.
Responsible roles: Service owner with the responsible approval authority and specialist reviewers.
Leave with: A scoped approval with conditions, an owner and a review date.
Record the purpose, people affected, tool and model, information sources, connected systems, intended outputs and any actions the system can take. Include AI already embedded in existing services.
Ask whether an error could affect admission, financial aid, employment, grades, health, safety, access to a service or a person's rights. Consider scale, vulnerable groups, sensitive information, difficulty of correction and the ability to act without a person.
Routine assistance within an already approved tool, information class and use may follow ordinary staff or faculty authority. New institutional deployments, protected information or integrations need the appropriate operational review. Consequential uses and autonomous actions need the designated institutional authority plus relevant specialists before a live pilot.
Use an isolated test environment and authorized test information. Use synthetic information where suitable and check that it does not reproduce personal records. Keep production credentials and actions disabled. A pilot with real people or records needs its own scoped approval.
Approve, approve a bounded pilot, request changes or decline. Name the conditions, prohibited actions, human reviewer, expiry or review date, stop authority and evidence needed for wider use. Legal or institutional prohibitions cannot be waived through a risk acceptance form.
Illustrative campus example
An admissions team may draft a public event invitation with an approved tool under ordinary rules. Ranking applicants changes the review route because it can affect opportunity. Connecting the system to send decisions or change records adds further authority that must be separately considered.
Use the editable companion to capture the decision in your institution’s own systems. These prompts are also available in the printable guide.
Identify the use, owner, people affected, systems, data and intended benefit.
Record the consequential effects, action authority, review category and the reasons for it.
List permitted and prohibited uses, specialist findings, unresolved issues and pilot limits.
Record the decision, authorized approver, stop authority, review date and change triggers.
Model policy: Section 3 · Section 4 · Section 6 · Section 9.
HumanSkills implementation recommendations informed by the sources below. These voluntary resources are not legal requirements or a certification. Apply current institutional requirements and specialist review to the actual use.