ISO/IEC 42001:2023·Annex A A.5.5·high·Component: Organizational controls

What this control requires

Potential societal impacts of AI systems shall be identified, assessed, and addressed in governance and risk treatment activities.
— ISO/IEC 42001:2023, Annex A A.5.5

In plain English

Potential societal impacts of AI systems shall be identified, assessed, and addressed in governance and risk treatment activities. 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.5.5) 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.
  • Govern. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
  • Scope: ai systems, risk, governance.

Evidence to collect

  • Policy Document. A signed and version-controlled policy / standard / procedure document.

Approved AI governance and risk assessment procedures should define how societal impacts are identified, assessed, and addressed. Evidence should show documented assessments, governance review, and treatment actions for broader societal consequences. Focus: Assessment of societal impact.

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 managementsocietal impactrisk managementpolicy management