AI Governance Headline Assessment

Do you confidently know how AI is being used across your organisation? Are you comfortable with the risks? Do you have appropriate governance and controls in place?

While AI can create significant opportunities, it can also introduce new risks involving information, decision-making, security, privacy and compliance.

URM’s AI Governance Headline Assessment provides a clear, independent view of your organisation’s approach to AI governance and a practical roadmap to improve your position. Delivered over a number of days, the assessment is designed to give senior leaders an accurate picture of how effectively AI is being governed, controlled and used.

What The Headline Assessment is Designed to Achieve

To provide you with an accurate picture. We focus on two critical outcomes:

• Enabling the safe, responsible and effective use of AI.
• Reducing the business risks associated with inappropriate, uncontrolled or unreliable AI use.

This is not a technical audit or compliance exercise. It is a business-focused assessment that helps you understand where you are today and what matters most next.

Independent and Credible

Our headline assessment draws on recognised frameworks and standards to establish your baseline:

• ISO/IEC 42001 AI Management Systems.
• ISO/IEC 38507 Governance implications of the use of AI by organisations.
• NIST AI Risk Management Framework.
• Relevant information security, privacy and data protection principles.

These leading frameworks and standards are combined with our market knowledge and experience to provide an independent and defensible view of your current AI governance and target state.

URM’s Assessment Framework

We structure the assessment around six core pillars of AI governance, aligned to recognised good practice:

• Governance – Leadership, accountability, policies and oversight of AI.
• Inventory – Understanding what AI tools and use cases are in use.
• Risk – Identifying and assessing AI-related risks and impacts.
• Data – Protecting information, privacy and appropriate data use.
• Assurance – Human oversight, testing, monitoring and evidence.
• Suppliers – AI supplier assurance, security, resilience and dependencies.

This structure reflects the key governance themes in the presentation, particularly inventory, purpose, risk, approval, controls and monitoring.

How We Deliver the Assessment

URM’s assessment is delivered through structured discussions and targeted document review with key stakeholders across:

• AI governance and accountability.
• AI policies, inventory and acceptable use.
• Risk, privacy and data protection.
• Human oversight and assurance.
• Supplier and third-party management.
• Security, resilience and incident management.

The depth and duration of the assessment are proportionate to your size, sector, risk profile and use of AI.

What You Receive

At the conclusion of the assessment, you receive a clear, high-level report that sets out:

• Your key strengths and good practices.
• A traffic-light priority list with practical, prioritised recommendations to strengthen AI governance.
• Areas for improvement that materially affect risk.

Outputs are designed to be board-ready, jargon-free and actionable.

Why URM?

Track record

URM’s extensive experience in supporting organisations conform and certify to existing ISO management system standards, such as ISO 27001 and ISO 22301, means we are uniquely positioned to provide informed and reliable support in helping you strengthen AI governance.  Over the last two decades of steady, organic growth as a consultancy and training provider, we have supported over 500 successful ISO certifications without being involved in a single failed certification project.  As such, you can be assured that any guidance you receive from URM is informed by a long history of success stories, and can guarantee the same result for your organisation.

Tailored solutions

We at URM appreciate that the use and development of AI will never be the same across any two organisations and, therefore, neither will the AI risk management programme.  The unique requirements of your organisation, its industry, size and structure, risk appetite, products and services provided, legal and obligatory requirements, etc., will always shape the approach we take.  Meanwhile, we will ensure the advice and guidance we offer you reflects your existing culture and working practices, enabling you to integrate AI risk management into business-as-usual operations as seamlessly as possible.

Knowledge transfer

One of the most fundamental aspects of the way we work at URM is our ‘real world’ knowledge transfer philosophy.  This enables you to benefit from our large team of consultants’ extensive practical experience and knowledge of AI best practice and, ultimately, independently improve your AI risk management by virtue of what you have learned from them, without needing to rely on ongoing consultancy support.