Module governance Roadmap

Governance Module Roadmap

Current Status

Production governance runtime exists across policy enforcement/lifecycle, compliance controls/reporting, masking/lineage/model governance, and OPA integration surfaces.

In Progress

• [~] hardening policy conflict/fallback parity across governance execution paths (Target: Q3 2026)
• [~] benchmark stabilization for policy evaluation and query-permission hot paths (Target: Q3 2026)
• [~] diagnostics consistency improvements for denial, conflict, and fallback incidents (Target: Q3 2026)

Planned Features

Short-term (3-6 months)

• tighten deterministic behavior under high-volume mixed-policy/per-tenant scenarios (Target: Q4 2026)
• expand regressions for version rollback, inheritance, and review workflow edge cases (Target: Q4 2026)
• improve operator-facing compliance and governance incident diagnostics (Target: Q4 2026)

Mid-term (6-12 months)

• re-baseline p95/p99 envelopes for policy and masking execution paths (Target: Q1 2027)
• broaden benchmark depth for compliance reporting and conflict-resolution workflows (Target: Q1 2027)
• harden long-running reliability under sustained governance evaluation load (Target: Q1 2027)

Implementation Phases

Phase 1: Design / API Contract

• freeze policy/compliance/masking/lineage/versioning contracts for active major line (Target: Q3 2026)
• define explicit error taxonomy for denial, conflict, and fallback classes (Target: Q3 2026)

Phase 2: Core Implementation

• [~] complete hardening for policy lifecycle and compliance execution internals (Target: Q4 2026)
  • PolicyState enum and lifecycle state machine (DRAFT→ACTIVE→DEPRECATED→RETIRED)
  • Lifecycle validation and state transition enforcement
  • Lifecycle audit logging and user tracking
  • [~] Compliance execution hardening (in progress)
  • Masking/lineage/model governance contract bounds enforcement
• align masking/lineage/model governance behavior to bounded runtime contracts (Target: Q4 2026)

Phase 3: Error Handling and Edge Cases

• [~] standardize fail-closed behavior for invalid policy and unsafe access scenarios (Target: Q4 2026)
  • OPA adapter error classification (timeout/malformed/network/unknown)
  • Fail-closed defaults on OPA errors (deny-by-default)
  • Policy engine path hardening (exhaustive deny paths)
  • Unsafe access scenario testing
• [~] unify diagnostics across conflict, fallback, and compliance/reporting failures (Target: Q4 2026)
  • GovernanceDiagnostic struct and DiagnosticAggregator (7300-7399 error codes)
  • [~] Diagnostic recording for OPA errors (global aggregator integration in progress)
  • Conflict diagnostic helpers
  • Fallback diagnostic helpers
  • Compliance/reporting diagnostic aggregation

Phase 4: Tests

• expand focused regressions for policy versioning/inheritance/review edge scenarios (Target: Q4 2026)
• extend deterministic fixture coverage for compliance and masking permutations (Target: Q4 2026)

Phase 5: Performance and Hardening

• lock benchmark-backed release gates for governance hot paths (Target: Q4 2026)
• validate p95/p99 and throughput behavior against release baselines (Target: Q4 2026)

Phase 6: Documentation and Acceptance

• core governance module docs aligned to source-verifiable behavior
• roadmap/future planning separated from historical changelog entries

Production Readiness Checklist

• core governance surfaces documented and source-verified
• module-level security and failure behavior documented
• benchmark mapping documented in performance expectations
• remaining hardening tasks closed for conflict/fallback/versioning edge paths
• release benchmark stabilization complete

Known Issues and Limitations

• runtime outcomes depend on policy set quality and operational governance configuration.
• selected fallback/conflict edge scenarios require continued hardening.
• benchmark breadth should keep expanding for advanced governance workflows.

Breaking Changes

No breaking governance contract planned. Any contract-breaking change requires migration notes and changelog entry before merge.

Program Execution Model — Wave Context

This module is scoped to Wave C — Security Production Validation in the program-level wave model. Wave C begins only after Wave B exit criteria are met. See [[../../ROADMAP.md|ROADMAP]] for the full Wave A → B → C → D gate model and exit criteria.

Wave C Scope for governance

• Governance: harden policy-gate completeness and integrity under concurrent and high-volume policy loads, and validate governance enforcement across all active editions (Target: Q4 2026)

Wave C Entry Gate (prerequisite from Wave B)

• Wave B gate is closed: retrieval chain baselines stable, ACM observability gates closed, hardware baselines confirmed (Target: Q4 2026)

Wave C Exit Criteria (this module's contribution)

• Production-style security integration evidence complete (Target: Q4 2026)
• Integrity and reliability verified under sustained load (Target: Q4 2026)
• Policy gates consistently block boundary/license/hash/SBOM regressions (Target: Q4 2026)

Dependencies on Later Waves

• Wave D operability hardening depends on stable Wave C security controls.