Board-ready on AI
Duties, oversight, assurance and transparency for AI.
Three hours on what boards answer for when AI shapes decisions: duties, accountability, oversight, assurance and transparency, with the evidence to expect at every stage.
- Level
- Focus
- Learning time
- 3 hours
- Where
- AI and Governance
- Price
- £69
When you step up to a higher level, what you paid in the last 12 months for lower-level courses inside the bigger course comes off its price, in proportion to how much of each is inside it, whichever topic it's from. Courses at the same or a lower level don't give credit against each other. A Focus course or above always costs at least £15. Read the full terms
Certificate of Completion, or Certificate of Completion and Assessment with a short assessment
Overview and Outcomes.
Who It's For
Board members, councillors, trustees and senior officers who oversee the use of AI
Overview
This Focus brings together five modules on the board's role in AI. It opens with why AI is a governance question, drawing on the National Audit Office's 2024 report and the Committee on Standards in Public Life's review of the Nolan Principles. It then examines the duties of directors, trustees, councillors and housing boards through the Companies Act 2006, public law, housing regulation and the Charity Commission's 2024 position, with the Deep Knowledge Ventures case and a practical accountability map. Oversight follows, through the Institute of Directors' twelve principles, risk appetite and board reporting, then assurance through the Three Lines Model, the NIST AI Risk Management Framework and ISO/IEC 42001. It closes on transparency, the Algorithmic Transparency Recording Standard and the Dutch childcare benefits scandal.
Aims
This programme aims to equip board members to know what they answer for when AI shapes decisions, to map accountability to named people, and to match the depth of oversight, assurance and openness to the stakes for the people a service exists for.
In summary, you will be able to:
- Explain why accountability for every AI-assisted decision stays with named people, and map ownership, override and reporting for the AI tools your organisation uses.
- Set risk appetite and proportionate assurance for AI by type of use, drawing on the Institute of Directors' principles, the Three Lines Model and recognised standards.
- Apply the Algorithmic Transparency Recording Standard and scrutiny lines of enquiry to test whether an AI proposal is open enough to keep public trust.
What you'll develop
Through this Focus course, you will build the ability to:
- Explain why AI is a strategic, risk, rights and trust matter for boards, and distinguish governing AI from AI in governance.
- Explain why accountability for AI-assisted decisions stays with named people, and what the Deep Knowledge Ventures and OpenAI cases show about board authority.
- Use the six-part accountability map to record ownership, override, assurance and reporting for an AI tool in your organisation.
- Set risk appetite for AI by type of use, from averse for decisions about rights and safeguarding to eager for routine administration.
- Plan proportionate assurance for your organisation's AI, rating impact and opacity and following the six steps from Map to Follow up.
- Apply the six lines of enquiry, routes to worker voice and the transparency test to an AI proposal in your organisation.
Built from 2 parts.
3 hours of learning.
- 01Who answers for the algorithm?AI governance duties, accountability and oversightBitesize3 modules
- 02Assured and openAI assurance, transparency and public scrutinyBitesize2 modules
Keep going.
Part of the AI and Governance topic, also sold whole as Minding the machine.
Go deeper, and pay only the difference
- You are hereFocus, 3 hours, £69
- The whole topicExplore, Minding the machine, 6 hours, £129. Already own the Focus? You pay £60.
When you step up to a higher level, what you paid in the last 12 months for lower-level courses inside the bigger course comes off its price, in proportion to how much of each is inside it, whichever topic it's from. Courses at the same or a lower level don't give credit against each other. A Focus course or above always costs at least £15. Prices per person. Read the full terms