VES

Normative Text

Specification

This document defines the normative requirements of the Veriscopic Evidence Standard (VES) v1.1. The key words MUST, SHALL, SHOULD, MAY, and SHOULD NOT are to be interpreted in accordance with RFC 2119.

VES defines the requirements of a scrutiny-ready evidence record. It does not mandate a single product, vendor, or software architecture.

Status of this standard

This document defines Version 1.1 of the Veriscopic Evidence Standard (VES). It is published as a stable reference specification. Future revisions, if any, will be versioned and published separately.

1. Scope

VES applies to the capture, preservation, sealing, and later verification of evidence relating to consequential human, organisational, or system-assisted judgement.

It is intended for situations in which a decision, approval, rejection, escalation, delegation, acceptance of risk, or permission to proceed may later require review under scrutiny.

2. Definitions

  • Decision-state — the evidence context that existed at the moment a consequential judgement was exercised.
  • Evidence Pack — a structured record capturing the relevant decision-state at a specific point in time.
  • Execution boundary — the point at which a judgement, recommendation, or assessment becomes a committed organisational act or outcome.
  • Point-in-time — the relevant moment at which the decision-state is recorded, before later hindsight, reinterpretation, or post-event reconstruction.
  • Verifier — a party capable of independently assessing the integrity, stated timing, and completeness of an Evidence Pack.

3. Minimum evidence pack requirements

An Evidence Pack MUST include, at minimum:

  • a point-in-time timestamp or equivalent temporal anchor
  • a description of the judgement, act, or outcome being evidenced
  • identification of the accountable role, actor, or authority context
  • the material context or conditions under which the judgement was made
  • the relevant inputs, artefacts, or system outputs relied upon
  • an integrity mechanism enabling later verification

4. Integrity and sealing

Evidence Packs MUST be protected against undetected modification. A cryptographic hash, seal, or equivalent integrity mechanism SHALL be generated at the time of capture or immediately adjacent to it.

The integrity mechanism MUST be sufficiently stable and reproducible to allow later verification of whether the evidence record has been materially altered.

5. Timestamping

Timestamps MUST be generated at, or immediately adjacent to, the point at which the relevant decision-state is captured. They SHALL NOT be retroactively rewritten as if they reflected the original moment of judgement.

6. Verification

An Evidence Pack MUST be independently verifiable. Verification SHALL make it possible to assess:

  • whether the evidence record existed at the claimed time
  • whether it has remained materially unaltered
  • whether the minimum required elements were present

7. Implementation neutrality

VES is implementation-neutral. Conformance to the standard MAY be achieved through different software systems, operating models, storage approaches, or delivery architectures, provided the normative requirements of this specification are met.

8. Version pinning

Where evidence is created, cited, assessed, or challenged over time, references to VES SHOULD specify the applicable version of the standard.

Reference: RFC 2119 — Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels.