A grant in force at the time
For any past decision, show that the grant behind it was in the allowed state at the time. Show that every policy record it cited was within its validity window: after it was adopted and before its expiry or review date.
What is justified delegation?
A delegation lets a system decide for an organization. It is justified only while its permission, its evidence, and the capacity to correct its errors all still hold.
An organization delegates when it lets a system make a class of decisions for it, such as approving refunds under $200. The delegation is justified only while all of these hold. The system's permission for that class has not been suspended, revoked, or sent back for review. The evidence the permission rests on has not expired. And the people and budget needed to correct its errors are still in place.
Justification describes the delegation now, not the review that approved it. The question changes from whether the launch was approved to whether the delegation would be approved again on today's evidence.
The standards record each part. The permission is a grant, held in one of four states: allowed, review required, suspended, or revoked. Only an allowed grant justifies a decision. The evidence is a set of policy records, each with an expiry or review date, and a policy record past its date no longer justifies the grant.
A hypothetical case. A claims triage delegation is suspended automatically when its policy record on population drift passes its review date. It resumes only after a new drift study is filed and the grant is renewed.
In the glossary: Justified delegation.
In practice
What to look for
Launch approval treated as permanent
The launch review is treated as permanent justification. Nothing expires and nothing is renewed. The absence of complaints is read as continued evidence.
Decisions made under a live grant
Publish the share of consequential decisions made under a grant in the allowed state, and the median age of live grants against their renewal interval.
Where the standards use it:
- STD-07 Revisable delegation record (standard). The record that carries the holder, the ceiling, the dependence, and the revocation conditions.
- Laws for engineering delegated intelligence (doctrine). Laws II and III state why authority decays and why evidence must stay coupled to it.
- Delegation validity (eval). Test whether the grant behind each decision was in force when the decision was made.
How is this different from an approved deployment?
Approval is a past event. Justification is a current state. It lapses when the evidence behind the grant expires or the capacity to correct it is withdrawn.
What makes a delegation stop being justified?
An expired policy record, a grant past its renewal date, no one resourced to correct its errors, or the system acting outside the grant's scope.