Volume VII — Provenance

Official Definition

Provenance within the 360WiSE Framework is the documented history of where information, evidence, content, identity claims, records, publications, media, technical artifacts, or authority statements originated and how they moved, changed, or were reproduced over time.

Provenance identifies the source, author, publisher, submitting authority, date, custody, transformation history, and relationship between an original record and later copies, summaries, republications, citations, or derivative representations.

Provenance does not determine truth by itself. It establishes the traceable history necessary to evaluate the reliability, authority, independence, and meaning of information.

Purpose

The purpose of Provenance is to make information traceable.

A claim may appear credible because it is repeated across many websites, databases, articles, or AI responses. Without provenance, those repetitions may be mistaken for multiple independent sources even when they all originate from one statement, press release, database entry, content feed, or unsupported publication.

Provenance helps distinguish original evidence from repetition, official publication from third-party interpretation, authorized submission from anonymous assertion, and primary records from derivative summaries.

The Provenance Problem

The provenance problem occurs when information is separated from its origin, publication history, author, date, authority, or chain of transformation.

Common provenance failures include:

• A copied claim being presented without identifying the original source
• A press release being mistaken for independent reporting
• Multiple syndicated articles being treated as separate confirmations
• A screenshot being published without a traceable source or date
• An edited document being presented as the original
• A quotation being separated from its speaker or context
• An AI-generated summary being treated as primary evidence
• A database entry being reproduced without identifying the database
• A record being attributed to the wrong author or institution
• A later correction being disconnected from the original publication
• A technical artifact being published without version or authorship information
• A source URL changing without an archived reference
• A participant-submitted claim being presented as independently confirmed
• A derivative work being represented as an original record

When provenance is missing, unsupported statements may acquire false authority through repetition, while legitimate primary records may become difficult to distinguish from copies or interpretations.

Provenance Model

The 360WiSE Provenance Model documents the origin, authority, chronology, custody, transformation, and publication relationships associated with material information.

What Provenance May Describe

Provenance may be documented for material records and artifacts including:

• Identity claims
• Verification evidence
• Government records
• Corporate documents
• Licenses and credentials
• Trademark records
• Contracts and authorization letters
• Press releases
• News and editorial publications
• Photographs and video
• Broadcast content
• Applications and platform listings
• Technical specifications
• Software releases
• JSON and JSON-LD records
• White papers
• Recognition observations
• Corrections and retractions
• Registry records
• Historical archives
• Participant submissions
• AI-generated or machine-generated outputs

Source Origin

Source Origin identifies the earliest documented source from which a record, claim, publication, or artifact is known to have originated.

The earliest discoverable online appearance is not always the true original source. A record may have existed in a private document, government filing, institutional archive, contract, broadcast, database, or physical publication before becoming publicly accessible online.

Source Origin may identify:

• The original creator
• The submitting participant
• The issuing institution
• The first known publication
• The original filing authority
• The first technical release
• The original media recording
• The source database
• The original document identifier
• The first verifiable publication date

Where the true origin cannot be established, the record should be described as the earliest known or earliest verified source rather than represented as the absolute origin.

Authorship and Authority

Authorship identifies who created or materially prepared a record. Publication Authority identifies who officially issued, approved, maintained, or published it.

These may be the same entity, but they are not always identical.

Examples include:

• An employee authors a report published by an institution
• An attorney prepares a letter signed by an authorized executive
• A developer creates code released by a company
• A journalist writes an article published by a news organization
• A participant submits information published within the Registry
• A government department issues a record maintained by a larger agency
• An AI system generates a summary displayed by a platform operator

Provenance should distinguish the creator, submitter, publisher, owner, approver, and custodian where those roles differ materially.

Publication Lineage

Publication Lineage documents the relationship between an original publication and later reproductions, syndications, summaries, excerpts, citations, translations, or adaptations.

A publication lineage may include:

• The original publication
• The original publisher
• The first publication date
• The syndication service
• Republishing outlets
• Edited or shortened versions
• Translations
• Corrections or updated editions
• Archived copies
• Later articles citing the original
• AI summaries derived from the publication

Publication Lineage helps prevent multiple reproductions of one source from being interpreted as multiple independent authorities.

Chain of Custody

Chain of Custody documents who possessed, controlled, transferred, stored, published, or modified a record from its origin through its present state.

Chain-of-custody documentation is especially relevant when a record is private, restricted, contractual, technical, evidentiary, or subject to modification.

A custody record may identify:

• The original holder
• The submitting party
• The date received
• The storage location
• Authorized transfers
• Material modifications
• Access limitations
• Verification or review dates
• The current custodian
• Integrity checks or hashes where applicable

A complete chain of custody may not be available for every public record. Where material gaps exist, those limitations should be documented.

Transformations and Derivative Records

Information may be transformed without becoming false. However, the transformation should be distinguishable from the original record.

Transformations may include:

• Editing
• Summarization
• Translation
• Transcription
• Data extraction
• Reformatting
• Syndication
• Compression
• Image cropping
• Video clipping
• Metadata conversion
• Machine-generated description
• AI-generated synthesis
• Combination with other records

A derivative record should identify the original source where possible and should not be represented as an unaltered original when a material transformation has occurred.

Source Independence

Source Independence describes whether multiple publications or records originated from genuinely separate evidence, reporting, investigation, observation, or authority.

Multiple URLs, publishers, or search results do not automatically establish multiple independent sources.

Sources may be dependent when they:

• Republish the same press release
• Use the same syndicated article
• Copy the same database entry
• Repeat one participant-submitted biography
• Quote one original source without additional confirmation
• Use the same content feed
• Derive from the same institutional announcement
• Repeat the same AI-generated text

Independent sources generally originate from separate reporting, direct observation, distinct primary records, or independently obtained evidence.

Source Independence is relevant to recognition claims, verification strength, public authority assessment, and the interpretation of apparent consensus.

Technical Provenance

Technical Provenance documents the origin and history of software, specifications, schemas, structured data, APIs, digital files, reference implementations, and machine-readable records.

Technical provenance may include:

• Author or organization
• Repository or publication location
• Version number
• Release date
• Commit or build identifier
• Document hash
• File checksum
• Schema identifier
• Licensing information
• Change history
• Dependencies
• Reference implementation
• Test results
• Superseded versions
• Maintaining authority

Technical provenance supports reproducibility, integrity review, version distinction, and traceability across implementations.

Provenance Record

A Provenance Record documents the traceable history of a material information object, claim, source, publication, or technical artifact.

A Provenance Record may include:

• The record or artifact being described
• The originating person or entity
• The author or creator
• The submitting party
• The publishing authority
• The first known date
• The official publication date
• The source URL or record identifier
• The source type
• The custody history
• Material transformations
• Derivative publications
• Corrections or retractions
• Verification status
• Related entity identifiers
• Version or hash information
• Known limitations

Public access to a complete Provenance Record may be limited where privacy, security, contractual, legal, intellectual-property, or licensing restrictions apply.

Relationship to Verification

Verification evaluates whether evidence supports a defined claim. Provenance identifies where that evidence came from and how it was created, maintained, or transformed.

Evidence without provenance may be difficult to authenticate, contextualize, date, or connect to the appropriate authority.

Provenance explains the evidence history. Verification determines what the evidence supports.

Relationship to Resolution

Resolution determines where information belongs. Provenance documents where the information originated and how it reached its current form.

Provenance signals can help resolve a record to the correct entity, author, publisher, time period, or source.

Resolution connects the information to the correct identity. Provenance traces the information back through its history.

Relationship to Continuity

Continuity preserves an entity’s record across time. Provenance documents the source and transformation history of the records that form that continuity.

A correction, rebrand, transition, or updated specification becomes more understandable when the earlier record and the origin of each later change remain traceable.

Provenance records where each state came from. Continuity preserves the relationship among those states.

Relationship to Recognition

Recognition observations may identify where and when an external system described, cited, classified, or referenced an entity.

Provenance should identify the system observed, the date, the query or context where appropriate, the output captured, and the record supporting the observation.

A recognition observation should not be generalized beyond the conditions under which it was documented. Provenance makes those conditions traceable and reproducible.

Relationship to AI Systems

AI systems may summarize, combine, transform, or reproduce information from many sources. Their outputs may not always disclose the full origin, chain of citation, transformation history, or source independence behind the response.

Structured provenance helps distinguish official records, primary sources, syndicated copies, historical versions, participant submissions, and machine-generated summaries.

360WiSE may document the provenance of records it publishes and observations it captures. It does not control whether independent AI systems disclose, retain, interpret, or reproduce source provenance.

Public Boundaries

Provenance within the 360WiSE Framework does not:

• Prove that a claim is true solely because its source is known
• Guarantee the authenticity of every external record
• Guarantee an unbroken chain of custody
• Convert repeated publication into independent confirmation
• Establish authorship where authorship remains disputed
• Establish ownership where ownership remains legally unresolved
• Replace forensic examination
• Replace legal evidence procedures
• Replace archival institutions
• Require publication of private or restricted source material
• Guarantee permanent availability of external sources
• Guarantee recognition, citation, or ranking by external systems
• Control third-party platforms, databases, publishers, or AI systems
• Prevent external information from being copied or transformed
• Resolve provenance where the available record remains insufficient

Provenance is limited to the documented sources, dates, relationships, custody, transformations, and evidence available within the applicable review.

Related Canon

• Volume I — The Framework
• Volume II — Business Authority Infrastructure™
• Volume III — Identity
• Volume IV — Verification
• Volume V — Resolution
• Volume VI — Continuity
• Registry
• Recognition Protocol
• Developer Standards
• Change Log

Revision History