Governance documents (however they are stored and accessed) govern what an organization does and how it does it.  Some examples are:  business policies and rules; contracts; leases; product & service specifications; terms & conditions of supply; advertisements; regulations.  Governance documents also define or imply risks to businesses.  Some risks are planned and managed.  Problems arise from unplanned, unexpected risks, often caused by ambiguity, omission, or inconsistency in governance.

Donald Chapin, Mike Bennett, and I have set up a web site (www.governanceauthors.org) for governance authors — the people in an organization responsible for its governance documents.  The site is mainly about compliance and risk — not only in the narrow sense of regulatory compliance (although that's part of it), but also in ensuring that an organization can meet its obligations and commitments without unexpected, unplanned risk caused by its governance documents.  The site has some reference papers and links to relevant organizations and conferences, but we hope that it will develop mainly into a blogging site for discussion and development of good practice.

One strong theme is the importance of sound terminology (see my blog post "Two terms worth $680,000").  Kara Warburton, international chair of ISO Technical Committee 37:  Terminology and other language and content resources, is supportive and has already contributed two presentations.

Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Business Rules (SBVR) has a central role.  Donald and Mike are the co-chairs of the OMG's SBVR task force.  Mike is also the architect of the Financial Industry Business Ontology (FIBO) and one of the leading developers of the OMG's OWL2 specification of FIBO.  In parallel, he is developing a version that will be usable in natural language by governance authors.  We expect that interest in financial governance documents will develop quite soon.

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