Governance means explicit decisions
You do not need a large department, but you do need owners and limits of authority. A small model can have five functions, even if the same person performs more than one: sponsorship and prioritisation; design of needs; operation and control of sources; analysis/validation; reception and decision. Independence of the review may be desirable when the conclusion has relevant consequences.
Governance is not adding signatures to every news item. It is agreeing, before an urgent situation arises, who decides what to monitor, who approves changes, when a signal is escalated, what can be published and who keeps the reviewable version of the result.
Leave a trail without manufacturing bureaucracy
Useful evidence lets you reconstruct a decision or a change. For each key element it is enough to record: what, when, who, why, version, outcome and next review. Examples: the version of an intelligence question, the date a source was added, a capture incident, the review of a filter, an expert’s comment, the dissemination of a briefing and the decision-maker’s feedback.
Not every activity deserves the same level of recording. The requirement rises when there is high impact, strong uncertainty, regulatory risk or reliance on sensitive information. A decision on an industrial investment demands more traceability than an exploratory compilation of trends.
Company A case · simulation
Fictional caseCompany A case: a signal nobody can approve
The team detects an agreement announced by an emerging supplier. The analyst considers it relevant; the R&D lead points out that the announcement could refer to a demonstration, not an industrial product. With no escalation rule, the newsletter presents “commercial deployment confirmed”. The failure is not just one of wording: there was no review step when the degree of certainty was insufficient.
Company A agrees that claims about commercial adoption need at least one independent check or are published as “company announcement pending verification”. The analyst records the source, date, version and the expert’s objection. Management receives an uncertainty label, not an invented certainty.
Educational simulation: fictional information and organisations.
Interactive · Put in order
The briefing said “contract confirmed”… and it was a memorandum
Put the six steps of a responsible correction in order.
Activity: put in order the steps for correcting a briefing that has already been disseminated.
- Record the source and the exact passage
- Separate announcement from demonstrated adoption
- Publish v2 with the correction clearly visible
- Notify the recipients of v1
- Check whether any decision was made on the basis of the error
- Set a rule change with an owner
Design your map of decisions and responsibilities
For the activities approve needs, add sources, modify criteria, validate findings, publish products, manage incidents and review results, define a responsible person, a substitute, minimum evidence and escalation conditions. Test two scenarios: a critical source goes down, and the analyst and the AI diverge.
Deliverable: a responsibility matrix and a change log, usable in both a manual and a digital system.
Common mistakes: assigning generic responsibility to “the team”; not defining substitutes; keeping all the documentation with no access policy; disseminating conclusions without origin or date; believing that an AI output is an approved report.
Rule to take away: if a conclusion changes a decision, there must be a reasonable way to know who backed it, with what evidence and within what limits.
Optional extensionExtension · Governance proportional to risk
To avoid bureaucracy, use an authority matrix by type of decision. An analyst can maintain a documentary source without management approval; attributing the commercialisation of a technology to a competitor on the basis of an ambiguous announcement may require an independent review. The requirement rises with potential impact, uncertainty and the difficulty of correcting a mistaken dissemination.
| Company A fictional event | Decides | Validates | Minimum record | Exception |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New public tracking source | Operations lead | Coverage analyst | Reason, scope and date | Restricted source: permissions review |
| Change the definition of “adoption” | Method owner | Technical expert | Rule v2 + affected cases | Reclassify the historical series if applicable |
| Critical alert about a contract | Product owner | Second reviewer | Evidence and degree of certainty | Urgency: publish as provisional and set a review |
| Rectify a briefing already sent | Editorial lead | Person who validates | Previous version, change, recipients notified | Escalate if a decision based on the error has already been made |
Conflict-of-interest test. If the person who generates a summary is also the one who approves it, the organisation must acknowledge it and design compensating measures according to the risk: a double-review sample, traceability and the possibility for the recipient to challenge the conclusion. Do not claim that two signatures guarantee rigor: a superficial review adds bureaucracy and does not correct weak evidence.
Company A case · The correction that arrived after management
Briefing v1 states “industrial contract confirmed”. Two days later it turns out that the source only reported a memorandum of understanding. The error has two parts: an incorrect category and a product that has already been disseminated. The team keeps the original, issues v2 with a reference to the corrected passage, notifies the recipients of v1 and asks whether the information conditioned a decision. The history shows who made the correction and why; deleting the old PDF without a trace would make it impossible to reconstruct the incident.
Do it yourself · Simulation with three roles
Assign the roles of analyst, reviewer and recipient. The analyst receives a promotional announcement, the reviewer detects an ambiguous expression and the recipient asks whether to explore an alliance. Produce three outputs: an R06 evidence sheet, a dissemination decision (confirmed, provisional, do not disseminate) and an R15 log of the change. Acceptance criterion: nobody presents the announcement as a demonstrated commercial fact, the recipient knows what is pending and the incident has an owner and a review date.
Interactive · Match
Proportional governance: who decides?
Assign who decides in each fictional Company A event.
Activity: say who decides in each event according to the authority matrix.
Check it · self-assessment
Check your rectification simulation
This part needs professional judgement: there is no automatic marking. Complete your work in the practice, rate it with the lesson's rubric and compare it with the indicative solution.
What your answer should include
- You record the source and passage.
- You separate an announcement from demonstrated adoption.
- You publish a visible corrected version and notify the recipients of the earlier one.
- You set a rule change with an owner.
Indicative solution
Model solution for a briefing v1 that states "contract confirmed" when the primary source only says "memorandum of understanding": (1) record the source and passage; (2) separate announcement from demonstrated adoption; (3) publish v2 with a visible correction; (4) notify the recipients of v1; (5) check whether a decision was conditioned by it; (6) set a rule change and an owner. A provisional publication is defensible if it is labelled.
Mistake to avoid: Deleting the earlier version or inventing external confirmation.
Illustrative solution for a fictional case: reasoned alternatives are valid.
References and limits
- UNE · Asociación Española de Normalización. UNE 166006:2018. Gestión de la I+D+i: Sistema de vigilancia e inteligencia (2018). DocumentReference framework for watch and intelligence systems. It is cited only as context, never as a source of requirements.Reference consulted on 2026-10-18.
- Company A is a fictional case: its data, companies and figures do not describe real markets or organisations.
- The five dimensions and the 0–3 scale are a pedagogical rubric of the Academy: they do not reproduce clauses of UNE 166006, do not replace an audit and do not allow you to declare conformity.
Library · R06
Log of signals and evidence
Putting it into practice? Download template R06 · Log of signals and evidence and fill it in with your case.