Regulators ask the city to prove what a reported KPI meant and which sources fed it on a specific past quarter. What metadata capability is required?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
Auditors do not accept ‘trust me, we meant something else last spring.’ Keep historized definitions and lineage so you can show what the KPI meant and where it came from at that point in time. Live-only pages that overwrite the past fail the exam.
Full Explanation
Regulators asking what a KPI meant and which sources fed it in a past quarter need historized definitions and lineage, not live-only pages that overwrite history. Point-in-time meaning and provenance must be retained so the city can evidence past reports. Live-only glossary pages that discard prior meanings fail that need. Verbal recollections from whoever still works on the reporting team are fragile and non-auditable. Screenshots of dashboards without underlying definition or lineage records show appearance, not provenance. Exam capability: historized metadata for evidence. Caveat: retention of metadata history should follow records policy and be immutable enough for audit, with controlled corrections logged. Operationally, enable definition versioning and lineage history for regulated KPIs, pick a prior quarter, and rehearse producing the definition text and source path that applied then before the next regulatory cycle. Practice an evidence drill each quarter: reconstruct a prior KPI’s definition and source path from historized metadata without calling former staff. Historized lineage should retain transform identifiers, not only table names, so evidence can show how a disclosed figure was derived in that specific quarter.