1 Purpose
This document establishes governance requirements for Standards Review and Approval Procedure within the defined Good Taste Awards standards system.
2 Scope
This document applies to the requirements, decisions, records, controls, and outputs expressly identified under Standards Review and Approval Procedure. Award scope and exclusions are defined by GTA-STD-100; this document shall not create an additional award dimension. Operational prerequisites identified here affect assessment validity and never constitute product certification.
3 Authority and interpretation
The Standards Authority owns GTA-GOV-004; the Standards Authority approves it. formal verbs, defined terms, stable requirement identities, policy constants, and generated representations shall be interpreted under GTA-GOV-002, GTA-GOV-005, and the defined registers.
3.1 Registered relationships
| Relationship | Direction | Related document |
|---|---|---|
implements | outbound | GTA-GOV-001 |
governed_by | outbound | GTA-GOV-001 |
4 Requirements
GTA-GOV-004-R001 — Review initiation
The Standards Authority shall define the change object, owner, reason, affected scope, evidence, and required reviewers.
GTA-GOV-004-R002 — Competence
The Standards Authority shall assign substantive, operational, data, language, and publication review according to the change.
GTA-GOV-004-R003 — Independence
The Standards Authority shall prevent the author from acting as the sole reviewer or final approver of a material change.
GTA-GOV-004-R004 — Comment disposition
The Standards Authority shall record every material comment, resolution, evidence, accountable role, and unresolved consequence.
GTA-GOV-004-R005 — Validation evidence
The Standards Authority shall complete the required tests and rehearsals before approval.
GTA-GOV-004-R006 — Approval decision
The Standards Authority shall permit approve, return, reject, hold, or withdraw outcomes with an attributable basis.
GTA-GOV-004-R007 — Release readiness
The Standards Authority shall verify sources, dependencies, schemas, public projection, and recovery before activation.
GTA-GOV-004-R008 — Review record
The Standards Authority shall preserve the reviewed object, findings, responses, evidence, authorization, and resulting state.
5 Review sequence
| Stage | Accountable role | Required output | Stop condition |
|---|---|---|---|
| Initiation | Standards Authority | bounded change object, reason, source owner, affected scope, and review plan | scope or authority unresolved |
| Impact analysis | source owner with affected defined roles | requirement, process, form, data, test, interface, visibility, and migration impact record | a dependency remains unexamined |
| Substantive review | Method Authority or relevant subject owner | technical findings and evidence disposition | material finding unresolved |
| Operational review | Assessment Operations Lead and affected operating roles | feasibility, control, workload, failure-state, and handover findings | mandatory action cannot be performed or evidenced |
| Independent review | Independent Reviewer | independence, consistency, traceability, and unresolved-risk findings | author is sole reviewer or conflict remains |
| Validation | designated authority under the validation protocol | executed tests, results, deviations, and acceptance conclusion | established acceptance criterion not met |
| Approval | Standards Authority | approve, return, reject, hold, or withdraw decision with scope and basis | approval evidence incomplete |
| Release verification | Data and Publication Custodian | source, build, projection, route, integrity, accessibility, and recovery evidence | representation differs from approved source |
6 Reviewer responsibility matrix
The Method Authority shall review any change to construct, scale, intended audience, panel, statistics, candidate rules, confirmation, progression, result meaning, or validation. The Assessment Operations Lead shall review entry, sample, preparation, presentation, assignment, session, comment, and review execution. The Data and Publication Custodian shall review fields, states, retention, access, schema, interface, projection, and publication. The Independent Reviewer shall examine role separation, consistency, traceability, conflicts, and whether evidence supports the proposed disposition.
An author may explain and revise the proposed change but shall not close that author's own material finding, act as the sole substantive reviewer, or provide the only approval evidence. A reviewer with a material conflict shall be replaced and the recusal shall be recorded.
7 Findings and approval gates
Each finding shall identify its source, affected object, classification, evidence, required response, accountable role, disposition, verification, and closure state. Rejection of a material finding shall include a reasoned evidence basis; silence or absence of further comment shall not constitute closure.
Approval requires all mandatory reviewers, closed material findings, completed validation, consistent registered sources, successful release checks, a recovery point, and an attributable authorization. Conditional approval may restrict scope but shall not waive a failed non-negotiable control. A returned or held change remains non-active and shall not be represented as approved.
8 Conformity and records
Conformity with Standards Review and Approval Procedure requires evidence comprising the source evidence, defined decision, accountable role, and independent or automated verification. The record for each applicable GTA-GOV-004 requirement shall permit reconstruction without relying on an unrecorded explanation.
Evidence created under GTA-GOV-004 shall use stable identifiers, immutable event sequence numbers, and machine event timestamps. A correction shall be append-only. A nonconformity shall place the affected object in a non-releasable state until its consequence and confirmed disposition are recorded. Role combination remains subject to the mandatory separation rules.