Governance Dictionary

A governance dictionary is the difference between generic and specific protection. Generic sensitivity detection recognizes credit card numbers and email addresses; it does not recognize that a particular statute reference marks a document as restricted in this agency, that a named internal category triggers a retention obligation in this health system, or that a specific contract phrase makes correspondence privileged in this firm. Building the dictionary is mostly an exercise in importing what already exists — the vocabulary an organization's policies, retention schedules and regulatory filings already use — rather than inventing a classification scheme. The work that remains is deciding what each term implies for indexing, which is a policy judgement and belongs to the business.

Data Transfer imports that vocabulary into Centralpoint and Data Cleaner applies it as records are transformed for indexing. Because the dictionary consists of records, it carries version history, so what was being applied during any past period is establishable rather than recalled — and it grows as gaps surface during operation rather than needing to be complete before anything can begin.