Why Capture Records at the Source? Provenance and Proof - E139
July 28, 2026 · 00:14:00
Provenance decides whether your data is AI-ready Everyone wants to point AI at their content repositories. Maura Dunn's position in Episode 139 is simpler than that. A model can only be as trustworthy as the data feeding it. Provenance settles that question long before anyone builds a pipeline. Records capture points settle provenance. These are the moments in a business process where an input becomes a record. Seventeen (17) steps later, the process has changed that input into something new. That is another capture point. Every copy, every hand-off, every transformation makes chain of custody harder to establish. Content versus context Our back file characterization approach documents the method while we build it. We do not hand a client a disposition report with no reasoning attached. Consider a recommendation to destroy sixty (60) of seventy-five (75) files. That report is content. The folder structures, file properties, creation and modification dates, and security group access rights behind it are context. Context gives the client something to react to. We can say we hold this level of confidence that these records align with your sales and marketing category. That category carries an end of fiscal year trigger and a five (5) year retention period. The client then makes the risk judgment. Without context, one answer survives a year later: "because Maura said so." What the Superfund SITREP got away with We built the same principle into our records process mapping work. The contrast comes from the US EPA Superfund program. A SITREP moved from field samples and a gas chromatograph printout to a typed memo in a drawer. Eventually it went into a box at the Federal Records Center. That process produced no interim record steps. In a paper world, it did not need to. Engineering records capture points into the workflow Digital process manipulates information continuously. So the workflow itself has to carry the capture points. Mark the inputs and the interim decision support drafts. Mark the comment responses where public comment periods apply, and the finals. Automated workflow and document management version control make those records capture points easier to build than ever. Growing volume makes the discipline harder. Records prove what happened. That proof now doubles as the audit trail for whatever your AI does next.
