1. The Principle
All CIAO Standard governance bodies — the Secretariat, the Oversight Board, the Panel of Advisors, and the Regional Partners — operate under a volunteer-expert contribution model. No individual holding a governance position receives salary, fees, incentives, or commercial compensation from the CIAO Standard or from c-ao.com in return for their governance role.
This is the single most important integrity anchor of the Standard. The people who shape, review, and oversee the CIAO Standard do so on the authority of their expertise and reputation, not on the basis of financial interest in its publication or adoption.
2. The Tradition We Sit Within
The volunteer-expert model places the CIAO Standard explicitly within the established tradition of international standards bodies. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) develops its standards through technical committees of volunteer experts seconded by national member bodies. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) develops web standards through working groups staffed by volunteer participants from member organisations. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) develops Internet standards through open working groups without individual compensation. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) develops its technical standards through volunteer committees whose members serve without fee from the standards-development activity itself.
The CIAO Standard adopts the same foundational model. The credibility of a standard rests first on the independence of the people who author and oversee it. Where those people are paid by the publisher, the question of whose interests the standard serves is unavoidable. The volunteer-expert model removes that question at the structural level, before it can be raised at the content level.
3. What This Means in Practice
The Secretariat. The Founding Secretariat serves on a three-year rotational term seconded from one of the Regional Partners. The seconded Representative receives no salary, fee, or commercial benefit from the CIAO Standard for Secretariat service. Value received is limited to professional standing, institutional affiliation, and the opportunity to contribute to a meta-standard of broad application.
The Oversight Board. Once formally seated, Board members serve on time-bounded terms without salary, fees, or commercial compensation. Board service is an expert-contribution role; it is not a commercial appointment.
The Panel of Advisors. Advisors are seated on the authority of declared-domain expertise (information governance, cybersecurity, data science, supply chain, compliance, built environment, knowledge management, academic and editorial, and further domains as the Panel expands). All Advisors serve on voluntary advisory terms without remuneration. Initial appointments are for three years, renewable annually thereafter. The Panel operates under a flat convention: there is no Chief Advisor, no Senior Advisor, and no hierarchy within the Panel — every Advisor holds equal standing, differentiated only by declared domain.
The Regional Partners. Regional Partners represent the Standard within their territory for implementation support, regional training, national-level engagement, and industry-vertical application. Regional Partners are separately incorporated entities that generate their own commercial revenue from the services they deliver to clients in their territory. They do not receive compensation from the CIAO Standard for holding the Partner designation; the designation itself is the endorsement, not a payment.
4. Where Revenue Goes
The CIAO Standard generates revenue from paid membership tiers (Core, Essential, Professional, Enterprise, Conglomerate), from training and certification programmes, and from related services. This revenue funds platform infrastructure, editorial operations, technical development, programme activities, and the ongoing maintenance of the Standard.
Revenue does not flow to individuals holding governance positions. It does not flow to Panel Advisors, Oversight Board members, or Secretariat Representatives in their capacity as governance position-holders. Where a governance position-holder is also separately engaged for a different purpose — for example, a Regional Partner’s commercial delivery to an end-member client in its territory — that engagement is disclosed and subject to the conflict-of-interest protocol described below.
5. Conflict-of-Interest Posture
A person holding multiple seats across the governance bodies of the CIAO Standard carries parallel recusal obligations — one obligation per seat. A person holding three seats carries three parallel recusal obligations; a person holding two seats carries two. Each seat recuses independently from any decision materially affecting the commercial position of that person’s connected entity. Each recusal is recorded in the public minutes of the relevant proceeding, with the specific seat and specific commercial interest stated.
This discipline applies per-seat-per-matter, not per-person-per-matter. Relationships that are not commercial but nevertheless potentially conflicting — commercial partnership outside the CIAO Standard, institutional affiliation, prior employment — are disclosed in the member’s published bio on the Panel Advisor or Secretariat page. The recusal protocol and disclosure regime together constitute the operational expression of Article 6 of the Governance Charter.
6. The Commitment
The CIAO Standard commits to this structural separation as a permanent principle of its governance. Any future departure from it would require amendment to the Governance Charter, formal ratification through the Oversight Board, and public disclosure. The volunteer-expert model is not a temporary arrangement of the founding period. It is the integrity posture under which the Standard is published, and the basis on which prospects, adopters, auditors, and reviewers may evaluate the credibility of the normative content of the CIAO Standard.
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Foundational Authority
This Disclosure operates under the CIAO Constitution Section 3 (Foundational Commitments — Commitment of Volunteer Integrity), which declares the principle this Disclosure elaborates: that no body member, no Advisor, no Secretariat staff, and no commercial partner receives privileged change rights through their position. The Disclosure is the operational expression of that Constitutional commitment. Where this Disclosure conflicts with the Constitution, the Constitution prevails; the Disclosure is amended through the Change Management & Versioning Process to resolve any such conflict.