AI governance committee charter

What it is

The AI governance committee charter is the artifact that satisfies RUAIH focus area 1 — Governance — at the control level.

Who signs it

The chief executive, or the board committee that delegates the authority.

A document without a signature is a draft. An assessor is checking that someone with authority put their name to it.

What an assessor asks for

The charter, the membership roster against it, and minutes for the last three meetings.

What goes in it

• Purpose and scope — which decisions this body owns exclusively
• Membership by seat, not by name: executive leadership, regulatory and ethical compliance, IT, safety and incident reporting, clinical and operational leadership, cybersecurity, and affected stakeholders
• Quorum, and what happens when quorum fails
• The decision-rights matrix — what the committee decides, what it recommends, what it is merely informed of
• Escalation thresholds to the board
• Meeting cadence, and the standing agenda
• How a tool gets on the agenda, and who can put it there

The most common failure

A committee that reviews tools after procurement has a charter and no authority. Write the exclusivity clause first: no AI tool enters production without passing this body. Then check it against how the last three tools actually got in.

Where this sits

See the RUAIH crosswalk for how this control maps across CHAI’s playbooks and the NIST AI RMF.