Most AI governance cannot show a single decision. DAREB© sets out what must be shown when that decision is tested.

When one outcome is challenged, can you show exactly what happened, who allowed it and why it was permitted at the time?

Most organisations can describe how their systems are meant to work. They can only point to policies, roles and oversight, and explain how decisions are supposed to be made in general terms. That is not what is tested when something goes wrong.

When a decision is challenged, attention moves away from descriptions and onto one case. It becomes a question about a specific outcome, affecting a specific person, at a specific moment in time. The issue is no longer how the system is designed or how governance is described. The issue is whether that single decision can be shown clearly, using records and evidence that already exist.

Russell Parrott
DAREB - What must be shown for a decision to stand.
Parrott, R. (2026). The D-A-R-E-B Test: Can a Single Decision Be Shown?. Russell Parrott. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20033171

DAREB© - What must be shown for a decision to stand.

DAREB© starts with a single decision and stays with it. It does not look at systems or ask how they are intended to work. It takes one decision and sets out what must be present when examined for it to hold.

Every challenged decision eventually reaches the same question: can you show exactly what happened, who allowed it, and why it was permitted at the time. Not in general terms. Not as a process diagram. For this decision, affecting this person, at this moment.

Five things must be shown and each must be tied to that individual case:

  • Decision – What was done, to whom, and at what exact time.
  • Authority – The named person or body that allowed that outcome to happen at that time.
  • Record – Where that authority is written down and can be produced, and which existed before the decision was made.
  • Evidence – That the decision and its effect on the person actually happened, captured at the time.
  • Basis – The rule, law or agreement that applied at the time and permitted the decision.

If any one of these cannot be shown from records and evidence that already exist, the decision does not hold. What is missing is treated as absent.

The single decision question

Take a single decision made by your system and assume it is challenged tomorrow and answer the following question. Note: each part of the question must be supported by evidence, not just described:
Without accessing the system's internal constructs can you show the decision that was actually made and what happened as a result. Who, as a named person or organisation, authorised it. Where that authority is recorded, what it was based on at the time the decision occurred, and what legal, regulatory or contractual basis applied and allowed it to go ahead?
This is what regulators, courts, insurers and affected individuals require.

Across laws such as the EU AI Act, the Product Liability Directive, and disclosure rules in the UK and US, the position is consistent. If you cannot show the evidence, you cannot prove how the decision was made, who was responsible, or why it was allowed.

At that point, the decision cannot be relied on. It may be rejected, reversed or treated as unsupported. The focus then shifts from what the system did to why it was allowed to operate without a provable basis.

Where governance, responsibility and accountability actually sit.

This also shows how governance, responsibility and accountability fit together in practice.

These are not separate ideas. They are the same chain seen at different points in time. Governance makes responsibility possible. Accountability tests whether both can be shown.