Cognitive Sovereignty Self-Audit for Government and Public Sector
This audit measures whether your organisation retains the ability to make and defend public decisions when AI tools are involved in the decision-making process. It focuses on accountability, expertise retention, and the conditions under which your civil servants can explain their decisions to the public.
Every AI tool used in public service should have a 'veto button' statement: a policy that clearly describes when and how staff can override it without penalty.
Record what the AI recommended and what the human decided at every decision point. This creates the audit trail you will need if a decision is challenged.
Train new staff on the manual process first. Never onboard a civil servant who knows only the AI system.
Before deploying any AI in citizen-facing services, test it with at least one case from each group protected under equality law. Run these tests every year.
Ask your governance board: if this AI was gone tomorrow, would our service survive? If the answer is no, you have a fragility problem that no audit will fix.