Ordinant sits alongside the systems you already run. Your people, agents and applications connect to it as they do the work. They can contribute to a decision, find out what is still needed, check whether an earlier decision applies and carry out actions the decisions support. Ordinant handles the decisions; your existing systems carry on the rest of the work.
Work out what is being decided.
One piece of work can need several decisions. Before paying an invoice, you may need to establish that the goods were accepted, that the amount is correct and that payment is due. Each is a separate question.
Ordinant identifies each question using your institution’s definitions: what is being decided, for which case and under which rules. It gives that question a common reference, called a Decision Address, so different people and systems can tell when they are asking the same thing.
The address stays the same whoever asks the question, whichever workflow raises it and whatever answer is given. Approval and refusal can be answers to the same question.
People and systems can then find earlier decisions about the same question, and related decisions whose evidence or judgment may help. Whether an earlier decision can settle this question depends on what this use requires.
Work out what the decision requires.
Once the question is identified, Ordinant determines which requirements apply: the policies and rules, the evidence and judgments needed, who or what may supply them, whether an independent check is required and how much uncertainty is acceptable.
The requirements belong to the question being decided.
Different decisions can require different standards. Every person, agent and system contributing to a particular decision works to the same standard.
We make those requirements explicit from your policies, procedures and the judgment your institution relies on today. Your institution ratifies them before Ordinant uses them to establish decisions.
Establish the decision.
People, agents, rules and systems supply evidence and judgment. They may reason differently or disagree while the question is open.
Ordinant brings those contributions together and checks whether the decision’s requirements have been met. It does not redo the contributors’ judgment. While something required is missing or unresolved, the question stays open and Ordinant shows what is still needed.
When everything required is resolved and the contributions meet the standard, Ordinant establishes the decision, whether the answer is yes or no. This confirms that the declared requirements were met; it does not prove the answer right.
Keep the decision and what it depended on.
The established decision stays connected to the evidence, judgments, policies and earlier decisions it depended on.
The decision remains available after the person leaves, the agent session ends or the workflow finishes.
If something it depended on changes, expires, is withdrawn or proves wrong, Ordinant can find the affected decisions and the later work and actions that relied on them. Your institution can then decide what needs to happen. The original decisions stay on record.
Use the decision again.
When a question comes up again, Ordinant checks whether an earlier decision already settles it. What that decision established must meet the requirements for the new use, and the conditions for relying on it must still hold.
For example, a decision about a contractor’s insurance based on its own certificate may be enough for site access. Awarding a contract may require confirmation from the insurer as well. The earlier decision still exists, but more evidence is needed for this use.
Even where the evidence was sufficient, a condition can stop holding: the insurance may have expired. Ordinant distinguishes a decision that can be used now from one that needs more support or whose conditions no longer hold. A newer decision does not automatically replace an older one; the requirements for the use determine which can be relied on.
Act from the decision.
Some decisions settle a question without leading to action. Where action follows, Ordinant issues an authorization for one specific act, supported by every decision that act requires. For a payment, the authorization includes the amount and the recipient. We call this authorization a Decision Warrant.
Authority to spend $100,000 does not mean this $40,000 purchase should happen. The warrant establishes that the required decisions support this particular act.
The warrant can be carried to another system and used later, while its required conditions hold.
Another system can carry out the authorized act without working out the judgment again.
Before acting, that system checks the warrant and the conditions that must still hold, alongside its own identity and permission checks. If a required condition cannot be shown to hold, the act cannot proceed under that warrant.
Afterwards, that system reports what it did. Ordinant keeps that report with the warrant and the decisions behind it, connecting what was decided, what was authorized and what the system reported doing.
Work on the same decision.
People, agents, software and machines can all work on the same decision: finding it, contributing to it, establishing it, checking it, relying on it and acting from it.
You choose who and what contributes and acts. Those participants can change while the institution keeps its decisions and everything they depended on.