Certification
Foundation certification evaluates the deployer’s governance system, not the AI model. Guardians review evidence, governance controls, monitoring, and domain context against the HEART Standard. HVC credentials can be issued when measured governance quality meets the required threshold.
How certification works
- The deployer’s governance system is scoped: controls, evidence production, monitoring, model-change governance, oversight, and remediation.
- The evidence infrastructure is reviewed, including MAP-States evidence, Behavioral Oracle attestation, and GTE-backed execution trust where applicable.
- A Guardian reviews the relevant behavior, evidence trail, and Division context.
- The BGF scoring framework determines whether the governance system meets the threshold for certification.
- If it qualifies, the Foundation can issue an HVC credential for the relevant Division and certified scope.
Model changes
Model changes are events inside the certified governance system. If the governance wrapper persists and continuous monitoring shows no material governance shift, certification does not restart from zero. If scores shift or scope changes materially, Guardian review targets the affected elements.
Certification outputs
- HVC Gold for the highest governance tier.
- HVC Silver for systems that meet the next threshold.
- HVC Bronze for systems that qualify at the minimum certification level.
Why certification matters
Certification turns governance into something third parties can inspect. That matters for procurement, insurance, compliance, and public trust because it gives the decision-maker a verifiable basis instead of a vendor assertion. It also makes certification usable in multi-model enterprise environments because the durable subject is the governance system.