Strategically Actionable Records: DecisionMetadata as a Governance Layer for AI-Assisted Document Analysis

This working paper introduces the concept of Strategically Actionable Records, or SAR, defined as a decision-oriented metadata approach applied to strategic organizational records. It begins from the observation that organizations produce many documents that are useful for decision-making: reports, meeting minutes, audits, briefing notes, dashboards, project reviews, and committee decisions. Yet these records are rarely accompanied by the metadata needed to preserve their context, assess the reliability of the information they contain, identify similar experiences, make accompanying reservations explicit, or support their reuse in future decision-making processes.Drawing on a comparison with the NASA Lessons Learned Information System, this paper distinguishes between the capitalization of lessons learned and the decision-oriented enrichment of records themselves. It then proposes that decision metadata can be understood as a governance layer that makes strategic records reusable in human and AI-assisted decision-making contexts. Finally, the paper opens a discussion on the role of archivists, records managers, and business and operational teams in the design, production, and quality control of such metadata.