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Governance

Every decommissioning decision made in WisdomX Orbis is recorded. The platform is designed to give programme leaders, governance boards, and auditors a clear, accurate record of what was decided, when, and by whom, without any manual documentation effort.

How Governance Works in Orbis​

Governance in Orbis is built into the workflow, not bolted on afterwards. The key principles are:

  • No system can be decommissioned without an explicit approval — the decision button is the formal act of authorisation. It records who approved the decision and when.
  • Every system has a lifecycle status — Active, Redundant, Obsolete, or Decommissioned. Status changes are logged automatically.
  • Risk is surfaced before every decision — the Risk and Compliance Overview and the System Dependency Map are available at the point of decision, so approvals are always made with full visibility of the risk picture.
  • Snapshot creates an independent record — the cold storage archive created by Snapshot for every approved decommission serves as a permanent, retrievable record of the system's state at the point of closure.

Lifecycle Status and Ownership​

Every system in Orbis is assigned a lifecycle status and an owner. Status is assigned automatically based on data ingested from your connected sources, and can be reviewed and updated manually.

Status definitions:

  • Active — in live use, not a decommissioning candidate
  • Redundant — a replacement is in place or the function has been absorbed elsewhere. Decommissioning candidate.
  • Obsolete — end-of-life, no longer fit for purpose, or carrying risk significant enough to warrant priority closure. High-priority candidate.
  • Idle — not in active use. May be a decommissioning or archive candidate depending on compliance requirements.
  • Decommissioned — approved, archived via Snapshot, and closed.

All status changes are logged with a timestamp. The Lifecycle Progress dashboard shows the distribution of your estate across all five statuses in real time.

The Decision and Approval Flow​

When your team is ready to act on a decommissioning candidate:

  1. The system appears in the Decommissions Data Insights table with a recommendation (Decommission, Review, or Archive)
  2. The reviewing team member checks the system's cost, risk level, and dependency map
  3. They click the Action menu and select their decision
  4. The decision is recorded against the system: who made it, when, and what was decided
  5. For approved decommissions, the Snapshot process is initiated
  6. On Snapshot completion, the system status updates to Decommissioned

The decision record is permanent and cannot be altered. It is available to governance boards and auditors at any time.

The Role of Snapshot in Governance​

Snapshot is not just a derisking tool. It is also a governance record.

When Snapshot archives a system, it captures a complete point-in-time record of everything associated with that system: context, code, data, and documents. This archive is stored in cold storage and serves as the definitive record of the system's state at the point of decommissioning.

For governance and audit purposes, this means:

  • There is always a retrievable record of what existed before a system was closed
  • Regulators or auditors can request access to the archive if required
  • If a downstream impact is discovered after closure, the archive provides the context needed to investigate and resolve it

Audit and Reporting​

The Orbis dashboard provides live reporting on the decommissioning programme:

  • Lifecycle Progress — percentage of estate in each status, with trend over time
  • Potential Annual Savings — cumulative savings from completed and in-progress decommissions
  • Risk and Compliance Overview — current risk exposure across compliance, security, and operational categories
  • Decommissions Data Insights — full system-level view with status, cost, risk, recommendation, and decision history

All dashboard data can be exported for inclusion in board reports, governance packs, and audit submissions.

note

Carbon and energy savings reporting will be available as part of the ESG dashboard (coming soon). This will provide sustainability teams with a data-backed figure for the environmental impact of the programme.