Decision Rights Charter

Canonical definition

Decision Rights is the three-tier line for human-owned judgment: Delegate (machine may decide within bounds), Augment (machine drafts; human decides), and Reserve (human-only—no automation handoff). The Decision Rights Charter turns those tiers into accountable roles, escalation paths, and audit hooks leadership can defend to boards and regulators.

What decision failure does this prevent?

Teams adopt AI faster than governance catches up—shadow automation runs where policy exists but no tier labels exist on real workflows, and incidents reveal nobody knew whether the call was Delegate or Reserve.

Who commonly owns this problem

Chief Risk Officer, General Counsel, or AI governance lead rolling out tier labels

Why it matters

Insurance, finance, and product leaders ask for AI policy but need decision architecture. A charter connects tier language to named humans who can be promoted, demoted, thanked, or fired—not algorithms holding accountability.

Practical example

A claims workflow scores recommendations automatically. Without tier labels, legal assumes Reserve while engineering ships Delegate behavior—until an audit asks who owned the call.

What to do in the next 15 minutes

Open the Decision Rights Charter builder, pick one recurring workflow, and run the three-question tier test—Delegate, Augment, or Reserve—for each decision in that flow.

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