Where our authority comes from, and how you can check

This page is for donors, partners, auditors and anybody else who wants
to know how LEAT can show that a decision was properly made.

Every authority traces to a document

Not to a job title, and not to a permission somebody was granted in
software.

An office exists because a clause of a governing instrument creates it.
A person holds the office because of an appointment made under a
resolution. Both are recorded, both are dated, and both cite the
document they come from.

What you can ask for

An authority path: the ordered list of facts linking a person to
something they were allowed to do. Each step names the relationship, the
clause it comes from, the period it was valid, and its status.

Each step also says what kind of fact it is:

1. Fact. An approved source, or a state another system owns.
2. Derived. A calculation from those facts, done the same way every time.
3. Candidate. Something a computer noticed, waiting for a person to judge it.
4. Advisory. A model's output, which carries no weight at all.

Only the first two ever contribute. The other two appear so a reader can
see them and know they did not count.

Proof packages

For a formal request, LEAT issues a proof package. It states what was
asked for, the moment it was taken, how many facts it contains, what
policy redacted what, and a cryptographic root you can verify against.

It also states its own limits. It does not say governance is sound,
that controls are effective, that we are compliant, or that funds were
properly spent. It says which facts were recorded, under which sources,
at which time, and what was not looked at.

A page that oversells a control is worse than no page.

What is never disclosed

Declared personal interests and their content, conflict narratives,
individual votes, and compartmented findings. Not to a donor, not to a
registrar, and not to the board — the board sees that a declaration
exists and not what it says.