The BioChain has launched a new free resource designed to help organisations answer a difficult question: can you prove it?
A twenty-point self-assessment
The Provenance Readiness Check is a twenty-question self-assessment for organisations working with life-science, research or regulated data. It is designed to test whether the foundations required for reliable evidence provenance genuinely exist across an organisation’s current systems.
The assessment covers five areas: source and identity; transformation and lineage; versions and analytical context; auditability and responsibility; and resilience and recovery.
The questions deliberately go beyond whether an organisation possesses an audit trail or backup system. They ask whether records retain stable identities when they cross systems; whether a final conclusion can be reconstructed back to its source evidence; whether software, model and reference-data versions are identifiable; whether downstream conclusions affected by an upstream change can be located; and whether the evidence chain would survive a recovery, migration or vendor change.
Good systems, uncertain foundations
The principle behind the resource is straightforward. An organisation may have good individual systems and still discover that important provenance has become dependent upon spreadsheets, manual mappings, undocumented hand-offs or institutional memory.
The checklist provides a simple score indicating whether an organisation appears to have high-risk, developing, strong or provenance-ready foundations. It is not a certification or regulatory audit, and a high score does not establish legal or regulatory compliance. Its purpose is to help organisations identify the questions they should be asking before a customer, auditor, regulator or incident investigation asks them first.
Part of a new Advisory offering
The resource also forms part of the newly developed BioChain Advisory offering. Organisations identifying material gaps can use a Data Integrity Audit to map evidence chains in greater depth and determine what needs to be strengthened. Organisations do not need to be planning a deployment of The BioChain to use the Advisory service.
The philosophy is captured in one line: policies tell you what should happen. The BioChain establishes what your systems can actually prove happened.
Questions & Answers
What is the Provenance Readiness Check?
A free, twenty-question self-assessment testing whether the foundations required for reliable evidence provenance genuinely exist across an organisation’s systems.
What five areas does it cover?
Source and identity; transformation and lineage; versions and analytical context; auditability and responsibility; and resilience and recovery.
Is it a certification or regulatory audit?
No. It is a self-assessment tool. A high score does not establish legal or regulatory compliance — its purpose is to surface the right questions before someone else asks them.
Does using it require a BioChain deployment?
No. It forms part of The BioChain’s Advisory offering, which organisations can use without planning a BioChain deployment.