KF-2003 · Materiality and Assurance

How reliance and consequence determine the depth to which a governed knowledge object must be assured

Methodology · Draft for Experiment · v0.1 · 8 min read

Principle (KF-1000)  →  ▸ Method (KF-2000)  →  Architecture (KF-3000)  →  Implementation (KF-4000)

Purpose

This document defines materialityMateriality — the degree to which an object, claim, decision or transition may affect consequential action, reliance, obligation, exposure, representation or preservation (KF-2003). Vocabulary → in Knowledge Foundry and the assurance classesAssurance class — the ordinal grade (A0 Exploratory · A1 Working · A2 Routine · A3 Consequential · A4 Critical) that sets the depth of assurance required; attaches to the release / scope of reliance (KF-2003). Vocabulary → through which materiality is operationalised. It fixes, in one place, the depth to which a governed knowledge object’s obligations must be discharged as a function of the reliance placed on it and the consequences of its being wrong.

It exists because the lifecycle (KF-2001), the practices (KF-2002) and the architecture (KF-3000 series) each state obligations without stating how much rigour each obligation demands for a given object. Uniform rigour is the wrong answer in both directions: it over-governs exploratory notes and under-governs consequential advice. Materiality supplies the missing dimension, and it supplies it once, so that gates, controls, reviews, evidence and traceability do not each invent their own interpretation.

A single rule governs everything below: materiality grades the depth of assurance; it never grades the invariants. The six lifecycle invariantsLifecycle invariant — one of the six continuously checkable properties of an object at every instant: single identity, attributable transitions, justified transitions, inspectable transitions, provenance always present, lineage preserved (KF-2001). Vocabulary → of KF-2001 hold identically for every object at every class. What scales is the evidence, review, authority and reconstruction depth layered above that floor.

How This Document Sits in the Programme

KF-2003 is a Method-level document. It defines an obligation shape — proportionality — that the architecture then realises. Its architectural realisation is fixed by KF-3001 IC-23 (Proportionate Discharge), KF-3005 (gates and controls read the class), and the Scope-of-Reliance Record (SVC-06) to which class attaches. Its conformance consequences are carried by KF-3007. This document names no technologies and no deployments.

Assurance classes are one operational expression of materiality — the principal one — but they are not the whole of it. Materiality also informs which activities are recorded (KF-3004 §5.1), which decisions require independent review, and how deep a reconstruction must go (KF-3007). The classes make materiality actionable at the gate; the concept remains broader than the scale.

Part I · Materiality

1. Definition

Materiality is the degree to which an Operational Knowledge ObjectOperational Knowledge Object — the unit of design: a versioned representation together with its attached evidence, justification and acceptance-state (KF-1101). The system governs the object, never "knowledge itself". Vocabulary →, claim, decision or transition may affect consequential action, institutional reliance, legal or professional obligation, financial exposure, public representation, or the preservation of important knowledge.

Reliance is central to materiality but does not exhaust it. An object may carry high materiality because it will be relied upon, because being wrong would be costly, or because it stands for the institution publicly — often several at once. Materiality is therefore assessed across dimensions, not read off a single axis.

2. Dimensions of Materiality

A material assessment weighs, at minimum:

1. Reliance — will identified actors or systems act on this object, and how directly?
2. Consequence — what is the severity of a wrong, stale or misused conclusion?
3. Audience and representation — is the object internal, client-facing, or public; does it speak for the institution?
4. Obligation — does any legal, regulatory, contractual or professional duty attach to it?
5. Exposure — what financial, safety, reputational or operational loss could follow?
6. Preservation value — is this a claim the institution must be able to reconstruct and defend later?

No dimension alone fixes the class. The assessment takes the class that the highest-weighing dimensions justify.

3. Materiality Is Contextual and Version-Specific

Materiality attaches primarily to an object’s intended use and reliance context, not permanently to the object itself. The same content may begin exploratory and become consequential when it enters a board paper, a policy submission or a client recommendation.

Accordingly, assurance class attaches to the release / scope of reliance, not to the immutable object identity (KF-3000 §2; SVC-06). A new intended use is a new reliance context and may carry a different class. This preserves the single-identity invariant: the object does not change identity when its class changes; a differently-classed reliance is a property of the release, recorded against it.

Part II · Assurance Classes

4. The Scale

Five classes grade the minimum rigour expected. They are ordinal: each inherits the expectations of those below it and adds to them.

Naming note (A2). “Operational” was rejected for A2 because the term is already load-bearing three ways in the programme — in “Operational Knowledge Object”, as the Stage-5 lifecycle state, and as the KF-3000 §20 maturity profile. A2 is provisionally named Routine (alternatively Standard); the name may be settled at first review without affecting the scale.

5. Governance OverlaysGovernance overlay — an orthogonal attribute (regulated, confidential, public, client-facing, legally-privileged) adding obligations without changing class (KF-2003). Vocabulary →

Certain conditions are not degrees of reliance and must not be modelled as higher classes. Regulation, confidentiality, public exposure, client-facing status and legal privilege are overlays: orthogonal attributes that add specific obligations without moving the object up the scale. A low-consequence administrative record may be regulated; a high-consequence internal strategy may not be.

assurance_class: A3            # sets the depth of assurance
governance_overlays:          # add specific, additional obligations
  - regulated
  - confidential
  - client-facing

The class determines depth; the overlays add duties. An object may be Routine and regulated, Consequential and confidential, Critical and public, or Working and legally-privileged.

6. Minimum Obligations by Class

These are floors, not ceilings. A domain governance profile may add obligations; it may never remove the invariant floor (§9) or fall below the class minimum.

The obligations are stated as outcomes a reviewer can confirm, not as fixed metrics. Thresholds and cadences are set by the applicable domain profile (KF-4000), consistent with KF-2002’s treatment of success criteria.

Part III · Assigning and Changing Class

7. Who Assigns the Class

The object owner (Steward) proposes the assurance class. For A3 and A4, the designated governance authority confirms it. Automated classification may recommend a class but is never the final authority for consequential or critical objects. Any downstream user whose intended reliance exceeds the assigned class may request escalation; unresolved escalation blocks that reliance until the class is confirmed.

Assignment is itself a governed, attributable transition: it records who proposed, who confirmed, when, and on what basis. There is no silent classification.

8. Raising and Lowering Class

Raising class is expected whenever reliance or consequence increases — a new audience, a new decision context, a new obligation. It is recorded as an attributable transition and re-tests the gates to the new depth.

Lowering class is permitted only through an attributable decision that records the changed scope of reliance — for example, when a Consequential object becomes a historical reference no longer relied upon operationally. Historical evidence obligations are not retrospectively removed: a lowered class governs only future reliance; the evidence already required at the higher class remains preserved (lineage invariant, KF-2001).

Part IV · Universality of Invariants

9. What Class Never Touches

The six lifecycle invariants — single identity, attributable transitions, justified transitions, inspectable transitions, provenance always present, lineage preserved — hold identically at every class, including A0. An Exploratory object still has one identity, still records origin, still transitions attributably and justifiably. The class governs the depth of evidence and review, never the existence of the invariant properties.

This is the boundary that keeps proportionality from becoming a loophole. Materiality answers “how deep”; it may never answer “whether at all” for any invariant.

Part V · Exceptions and Escalation

10. Exceptions

A time-limited, attributable governance exception may permit an object to operate one step below the class its use would otherwise require, provided: the gap is recorded; a named authority accepts the residual risk; the exception is visible until closed (KF-3001 IC-19); and no invariant is waived. An exception may reduce required depth for a bounded period; it may never convert an invariant violation into conformance.

11. Escalation

Where evidence of a mis-classification arises — an object relied upon beyond its class, or a class assigned below its dimensions — any actor may raise an escalation event (KF-2001 event model). Escalation obliges the authority to re-confirm or re-assign the class before the contested reliance proceeds.

Part VI · Relationship to Other Documents

• KF-2001 — the invariants that class never grades, and the gates whose depth it sets.
• KF-2002 — success criteria whose required depth is fixed here.
• KF-3001 · IC-23 — the architectural constraint that discharges obligations to class depth; IC-24 — event-native evidence, whose volume this document keeps proportionate.
• KF-3004 · §5.1 — the material-activity definition this document governs.
• KF-3005 · §28, §32 — gates and controls read the class.
• KF-3008 — the authority model that confirms A3/A4 classes.
• KF-3007 — the conformance model whose Integrity and Reconstructability tests are graded by class.

Status and Next Step

This document is Draft for Experiment. Its scale, minimum-obligation table and assignment rules are hypotheses to be tested by the first vertical slice (a MacroLab Singapore Business Impact Assessment, provisionally A3 Consequential). The slice is expected to show whether the class minimums are workable, whether the dimensions are sufficient, and whether A2’s name should be settled. The document moves to Validated with Exceptions, then Approved, only after that evidence is in.