AI Governance Engineer
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Data provenance

By Updated

Information about the entities, activities and people involved in producing data, used to judge its quality and trustworthiness 1. In practice: where a dataset originally came from and on what terms (source, licence, lawful basis). Perfect lineage over unknown provenance is still ungoverned.

Developed in
ch. 14, Provenance versus lineage
ch. 12, Updating the policies you already have
Chapters
ch. 12, Governance Program · ch. 14, Development
Contrast with
Data lineage
Source
1 numbered reference, listed below

Commonly confused

  • Data provenance versus Data lineage

    Data provenance
    Information about the entities, activities and people involved in producing data, used to judge its quality and trustworthiness.
    Data lineage
    The record of how data moved and changed through an organisation's pipelines.

    The differenceWhere the data came from and on what terms, against the path it took through your own pipelines.

    Why it mattersPerfect lineage over unknown provenance is still ungoverned; erasure and disgorgement need both.

Where it is used

2 chapters of the Body of Knowledge use the term. Each link opens the first section that does.

Data provenance: mentions per chapter2 mentions of the term across 2 of the 23 chapters of the Body of Knowledge; the chapters the glossary cross-references are drawn solid.Other chapterCross-referenced, not named08 Regulatory Map: 1 mention08 Regulatory Map112 Governance Program014 Development018 EU AI Act: 1 mention18 EU AI Act1No mentions in the other 19 chaptersSource: the Body of Knowledgev0.5.0
Data provenance: mentions per chapter2 mentions of the term across 2 of the 23 chapters of the Body of Knowledge; the chapters the glossary cross-references are drawn solid.Other chapterCross-referenced, not named000102030405060708 Regulatory Map: 1 mention108101112131415161718 EU AI Act: 1 mention1181920212223Source: the Body of Knowledge v0.5.0
Mentions per chapter How often each chapter names the term, with the chapters the glossary cross-references drawn solid. The longest bar is where to read the term in use; bars spread across many chapters mark a term that runs through the discipline.
Mentions as a table
Mentions of Data provenance per chapter
ChapterMentionsCross-referenced
00 Preface0No
01 Definition0No
02 Why Now0No
03 Values & Principles0No
04 The Stack0No
05 Patterns0No
06 The Role0No
07 Maturity Model0No
08 Regulatory Map1No
10 Reading List0No
11 AI Defined0No
12 Governance Program0Yes
13 Risk Management0No
14 Development0Yes
15 Deployment0No
16 Fairness & XAI0No
17 Incidents0No
18 EU AI Act1No
19 Privacy & AI0No
20 Existing Law0No
21 AI Laws Worldwide0No
22 Principles & Standards0No
23 AI Agents0No
  • Lawful basis

    One of the six grounds in GDPR Article 6 that make processing of personal data lawful: consent, contract, legal obligation, vital interests, public task and…

Sources

  1. [1] PROV Overview (PROV-DM and PROV-O W3C Recommendations of 30 April 2013; provenance as information about the entities, activities and people involved in producing data). W3C. 2013-04-30. https://www.w3.org/TR/prov-overview/ (verified: primary)

Definitions of legal terms paraphrase the cited text, which governs. Dated statements are as of .

Cite this term

García Aibar, J. (2026). Data provenance. In AI Governance Engineering: The Thesis & Body of Knowledge (v0.5.0), Glossary. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22956197. https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/data-provenance. CC BY 4.0

BibTeX

@misc{aige2026dataprovenance,
  author  = {Jorge García Aibar},
  title   = {{Data provenance}},
  note    = {Glossary, AI Governance Engineering: The Thesis \& Body of Knowledge, version 0.5.0},
  year    = {2026},
  doi     = {10.5281/zenodo.22956197},
  url     = {https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/data-provenance}
}