AI Governance Engineer
GitHub

Justification memo

By Updated

The intake record for an AI use case: the problem, the non-AI alternative, the measurable benefit, who bears errors and how they contest them, reversibility and kill criteria. It answers "should AI be used at all" before a system reaches a gate, the go/no-go determination NIST places early 1.

Developed in
ch. 12, Strategy, value and whether to use AI at all
Chapters
ch. 12, Governance Program
Source
1 numbered reference, listed below

Where it is used

One chapter of the Body of Knowledge uses the term. Each link opens the first section that does.

Sources

  1. [1] Artificial Intelligence Risk Management Framework (AI RMF 1.0), NIST AI 100-1 (risk tolerance and residual risk; seven trustworthy characteristics; transparency answers "what happened", explainability "how", interpretability "why"; MAP 1.1 intended purposes; MANAGE 1.1 go/no-go determination; profiles). NIST. 2023-01-26. https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.AI.100-1 (verified: primary)

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

Cite this term

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

BibTeX

@misc{aige2026justificationmemo,
  author  = {Jorge García Aibar},
  title   = {{Justification memo}},
  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/justification-memo}
}