Architectural Governance Layer

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An architectural governance layer identifies the abstraction layer at which lifecycle control, authority retention, structural governance, and semantic governance are defined.

The architectural governance layer separates governance obligations from implementation technologies. This separation allows the Reference Architecture (RA) to define authority, lifecycle, versioning, and semantic responsibilities without prescribing a specific platform, product, language, repository, runtime, or deployment environment.

An architectural governance layer differs from an implementation governance mechanism. An implementation governance mechanism realizes governance through a selected technology. The architectural governance layer defines the governance meaning, responsibilities, and relationships independently of those implementation mechanisms.

abstraction layer at which lifecycle control, authority retention, structural governance, and semantic governance are defined independently of implementation technologies

Structured Information Processing Reference Architecture (RA)

An architectural governance layer provides the basis for defining governance responsibilities before those responsibilities are mapped to implementation technologies.

A Reference Architecture (RA) defines authority retention, lifecycle control, semantic governance, and structural governance at the architectural governance layer before mapping those responsibilities to a repository, ontology store, message bus, database, workflow engine, or runtime platform.