1. Purpose
Document Quality Control codifies the quality discipline applied to every controlled document in the CIAO Standard. It defines the visible record of document control state surfaced to readers, and the editorial conformance discipline that keeps documents coherent across the corpus over time.
Where the Change Management & Versioning Process governs what kinds of changes can be made to the Standard and through what workflow, this instrument governs the visible record of document control state after publication. The instrument is the operational expression of the Commitment of Traceable Lineage declared in the Change Management Process Section 2 (Principles) and of the Commitment of Transparency declared in the Constitution Section 3 (Foundational Commitments).
2. Scope
Document Quality Control applies to every document carrying a non-empty document reference identifier. Documents without a document reference are not controlled documents and the quality discipline does not apply to them.
3. Document Footer Sections
Every controlled document closes with three footer sections rendered automatically on page load. The sections appear in fixed order.
3.1 Version History
A tabular record of every published version of the document with columns for Version, Date Issued, Change Summary, Approved By, and Status. Rows are sorted by version descending — the current state appears first. Data is sourced from the document’s version-history metadata as maintained under the Change Management Process.
Status colour coding makes the current state visually obvious: ACTIVE in green, SUPERSEDED in muted grey, with transitional states (DRAFT, UNDER REVIEW) rendering in colours appropriate to the state. Editorial patches under the Change Management Process Section 8 third-segment increment may be aggregated into a single “minor patches consolidated” entry where the underlying changes are individually trivial; the Secretariat’s internal change log preserves the granular trail.
3.2 Linked Documents
A tabular record of every other controlled document the current document is in formal relationship with. Columns are Doc Ref, Document Title (rendered as a link), Relationship, and Tier.
Recognised relationship types name the role the linked document plays. Parent means the current document operates under the linked document’s authority. Child means the linked document operates under the current document’s authority. Supersedes and superseded by express the version chain across documents. References means the current document substantively engages the linked document without authority dependency. Operates with expresses peer relationship between administrative instruments.
The Linked Documents table is the operational expression of the Constitutional hierarchy declared in Constitution Section 7 — a reader on any controlled document can trace the document’s place in the Class A → Class B → Class C → Class D hierarchy by following these relationships upward and downward.
3.3 References
A tabular record of every inline reference the document makes to source standards via the chip-discipline mechanism set out in the Change Management & Versioning Process Section 3 (Editorial). Columns are Index (sequential), Standard / Framework, Clause / Section, and Relevance.
Every chip the document carries produces a row in this table regardless of whether the chip is currently visible to a logged-in member’s portfolio-filtered view. The References table is the unfiltered audit record — member-portfolio filtering operates on the inline chips in the document body; the References table at the footer remains complete. Documents that have not yet been chipped under the chip-discipline retrofit programme display “No formal references in content to populate this table” — an honest indicator of editorial debt rather than a claim the document has no source-standard relationships.
4. Behaviour and Performance
Footer rendering operates as a content filter that runs after the Dynamic Selection Engine’s bullet-filtering pass. This ordering is deliberate: the Engine filters bullets and chips based on member portfolio first; the footer system then renders the unfiltered audit record at the document footer regardless of portfolio configuration. A logged-in member with a configured portfolio sees a filtered body and a complete footer audit — both views are correct, the difference reflects the role each section plays.
Footer rendering imposes no observable performance cost on page load. All three footer sections are populated from post-meta and from the document’s own content (parsed once for chip extraction).
5. Forthcoming — Pre-Publication Quality Gates
The instrument’s forward scope extends to pre-publication quality gates that every change must clear before reaching the publication step of the Change Management Process workflow. The gates are scoped below; their full operational definition and enforcement plumbing is forthcoming and will be published as additions to this instrument under the Change Management Process at Functional category.
Metadata Completeness. Every controlled document carries the full set of document-control metadata fields populated with non-empty values appropriate to the document’s class and type.
Version History Discipline. Every published change advances the document’s version per the Versioning Convention; version history is append-only.
Supersedes-Chain Maintenance. Where a change supersedes a prior controlled document, the new document carries the supersedes reference, the prior document’s status is updated to SUPERSEDED, and a forward-link from the superseded document to its successor is preserved.
Minimum Viable Evidence Freshness. The MVE statement is verified current at every publication; documents whose MVE has drifted from operational reality have status downgraded to UNDER REVIEW until re-aligned.
Chip-Discipline Conformance. The four chip-discipline rules set out in the Change Management Process Section 3 (Editorial) are verified at every publication: registered references carry chips; multi-standard bullets carry one chip per standard; standard-agnostic prose carries no chips; no chip references an unregistered standard.
Cross-Reference Integrity. Every internal cross-reference resolves at publication; broken cross-references block publication.
6. Maintenance
Footer rendering reflects current document control state automatically. No manual intervention is required when a document is updated through the Change Management Process: the version history advances, linked documents are added or amended through their own metadata, chip references propagate as the document body is amended, and the footer rendering re-derives all three sections at every page render.
The Document Quality Control instrument itself is amendable through the Change Management Process at Functional category for rendering changes and at Material category for gate-definition changes. Changes take effect at the next minor release boundary and are recorded in this instrument’s version history.
7. Hooks
This instrument integrates with three other administrative instruments. The Change Management & Versioning Process sources the version history and linked-document metadata that the footer renders. The Canonical Source Standards Register is the authority gate the chip-discipline conformance check references. The Quarterly Errata & Submission Summary draws on Version History data to identify confirmed errata patches in each quarter.
Part of the CIAO Standard administrative instruments — see Standard Administration for the canonical index of operational policies and processes.
Part of the CIAO Standard architecture — see Standard Architecture & Tier Content Depth for the canonical domain spine and tier-by-tier content ladder.