Essentials for cloud
GOV-08 Executive artificial intelligence accountability
Make your executives answer for how the organisation uses artificial intelligence (AI), governs it and manages its risks. An executive or their delegate must approve AI features in your software-as-a-service (SaaS) or platform-as-a-service (PaaS) services before they are turned on.
Reviewed 18 October 2026 · Current to ASD's Essentials for cloud, published 15 October 2026
The principle
The board of directors or executive committee is accountable for ensuring that artificial intelligence is secure, controllable, human-supervised and used in an ethical and accountable manner.
The two actions
ASD's actions are quoted as published in Essentials for cloud. ASD has not given them IDs, so they are numbered by position. The letters show who does the work for each service model; our cloud guide explains them.
- C: Customer
- S: Supplied
- P: Provider-inherited
Action 1 of 2
Establish and maintain executive accountability for the use, governance and risk management of artificial intelligence within the organisation.
In plain English: Make executives accountable for how your organisation uses, governs and manages the risks of AI, and keep it that way.
- Domains
- Governance and culture
- Who does it
- PaaSCustomer
- SaaSCustomer
Action 2 of 2
Require executive or delegate approval before enabling SaaS or PaaS AI functions.
In plain English: Get approval from an executive or their delegate before turning on AI features in your SaaS or PaaS services.
- Domains
- Governance and culture
- Who does it
- PaaSCustomer
- SaaSCustomer
See all 30 principles in Essentials for cloud, or read our cloud guide.
Sources
The ASD publications this page quotes.
Quoted ASD material © Commonwealth of Australia 2026, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
Everything else on this page is written by Control Stack.