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Provenance

Ensuring that the origin and history of published documents, supporting material, information, and data are clearly disclosed – including who created it, using what tools, where and when it was created, and how it has been processed or modified

Provenance means that every substantive piece of information published by a public-serving entity arrives with its history of creation, modification, and publication attached and available for inspection.

We believe a person should be able to see where published material comes from, who is responsible for it, who attests to it, what evidence supports it, and what has happened to it from source to screen.

For a public-serving entity, Provenance means publishing information with clear authorship – naming the organisation and, where appropriate and safe, the individuals responsible for the work. It means maintaining visible version histories so that readers can see what has changed, when it changed, and why. It means providing verifiable sources and supporting evidence wherever possible, and openly acknowledging where evidence is absent, uncertain, disputed, or incomplete. It means disclosing when automated systems, including AI systems, have played a role in creating, editing, translating, summarising, ranking, or otherwise modifying published material.

Example requirements (illustrative)

These example requirements are grounded in established international standards, regulations, and laws, which are listed in full in the section below.

  • Published materials include clear authorship identifying the responsible organisation and, where appropriate and safe, the responsible individuals.

  • Documents, datasets, images, audio, and video retain accessible creation dates, modification dates, embedded metadata (where appropriate), and version histories.

  • Published materials are referenceable via durable identifiers, and include signatures, credentials, or equivalent mechanisms allowing later verification of authenticity and origin.

  • Claims, assertions, and published conclusions are linked to supporting evidence, source material, or openly declared absence of evidence.

  • Corrections, updates, removals, and retractions are visible to readers and linked to earlier published versions.

  • Organisations maintain auditable records describing how significant published materials were created, edited, reviewed, approved, and modified over time.

Standards, regulations, and laws informing this work

Organisations working in this area

Related standards: Responsibility to the Future Interoperability