ISO/IEC 42001:2023·Annex A A.5.3·high·Component: Organizational controls

What this control requires

Impact assessment methods, decisions, outcomes, and treatment actions shall be documented and retained as auditable evidence.
— ISO/IEC 42001:2023, Annex A A.5.3

In plain English

Impact assessment methods, decisions, outcomes, and treatment actions shall be documented and retained as auditable evidence. In practice, this means you can prove you assess ai systems-level controls on a defined cadence.

Why it matters

ISO 42001 is the first audited evidence regulators, customers and investors can ask for that you are managing AI risk. Each Annex A control is a check-box in that audit; it is also the management system enterprises are starting to require from AI vendors before an MSA can be signed.

This control is rated high. Auditors expect a named owner, a remediation SLA, and a tooling artefact that evidences continuous operation.

What an auditor looks for

An ISO 42001 auditor verifies you have an AI policy, a risk-based system of impact assessments for each AI system, lifecycle controls from data acquisition through retirement, and third-party-AI controls that pierce the vendor's wrapper to underlying model behaviour.

Within Organizational controls, the assessor will trace your implementation back to the catalogue reference (Annex A A.5.3) and look for objective evidence on the latest two assessment cycles.

How to implement

Policy Management

Docs. Keep each policy in version-controlled Markdown alongside the code that implements it; ship a signed PDF snapshot at each annual review and link the SHA into the SoA.

Operational checklist

  • Assess. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
  • Document. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
  • Scope: ai systems, governance.

Evidence to collect

  • Policy Document. A signed and version-controlled policy / standard / procedure document.
  • Ticketing Workflow. ticketing_workflow evidence

Impact assessment records should document methods, decisions, outcomes, and treatment actions, while workflow evidence should demonstrate retention, approvals, and remediation follow-through. Focus: Documentation of AI system impact assessments.

Common pitfalls

  • Policies that no engineer has read; the version in Confluence drifts from the version that's actually being enforced.

How it maps to other frameworks

Computed from shared tags, control component and key-operation subjects — handy when you are reconciling controls across an audit.

Related controls in ISO/IEC 42001:2023

References

Topics: governance riskai risk managementimpact assessmentrisk managementaudit evidencepolicy management