Assign owners to AI assets
Work the queue of AI assets nobody is accountable for, newest sighting first, and close the ownership findings by registering them.
- Version: 0.4
- Feature: governance
- Role: admin_user, viewer
- Type: task
Ownership is the work queue: every AI asset nobody has claimed, most recently seen first, and the findings that close when somebody does. It exists because an unowned asset is a finding, not a gap in a report.
What do I need?
- Licence
- Any
- Role
admin_userviewer
Prerequisites
- Discovery has run at least once, so there is an estate to have gaps in.
- You are signed in as admin_user or superadmin to register anything.
- You know, or can find out, who in the organisation is accountable for each asset on the list.
admin_user, superadmin, auditor and viewer may read the page. Register is a write and
a viewer is refused with READ_ONLY_ROLE.
/assets/screenshots/governance-ownership@0.4.pngWhy this page sorts by sighting, not by risk
Every other list in the module is riskiest-first. This one is newest-sighting-first, and the difference is the point: an ownerless asset seen an hour ago is a live accountability gap, while one last seen in March is a cleanup task. Risk tier cannot tell them apart, because an unowned asset is almost always unclassified too.
Read the queue
Open the page
Select Governance → Ownership.
The banner Two different problems on one list is always shown, and it is the sentence to read before triaging anything: Shadow means we did not know it existed — that goes to Security. Unregistered means we know it and nobody owns it — that goes to management.
Read the four counts
Read Ownerless assets, Shadow, Unregistered and Findings closed.
Ownerless assets excludes decommissioned ones, which are retired rather than neglected. Findings closed is cumulative across every registration and retirement ever performed, not a figure for a window.
Read open against closed by type
Read Findings: open vs closed.
One row per finding type with its open and closed counts. Types this build of the dashboard does not know — the drift family — are appended rather than dropped, so the table cannot report zero for something the estate has open.
Work the table
Read Waiting for an owner.
The same asset table as Governance inventory, pre-filtered to unowned assets and sorted by last seen, newest first. Selecting a row opens the same drawer, with evidence, findings and who has actually been using it.
Assign an owner
Start the registration
Select Register on a row.
The dialog names the asset, its kind and the channel it was seen on.
Name the accountable person
Enter Owner email, and Owner team if you use it.
The helper is exact about what this is: The person accountable for this asset. Required — an unowned asset is a finding. An owner is not a user.
Declare the risk profile, or accept an unclassified asset
Fill in Risk profile, or leave it empty.
Leaving it empty is allowed and is honest, but the dialog warns: Submitting now assigns an owner and leaves the asset Unclassified — the missing-profile finding stays open. Only a declared profile can produce a real tier.
Submit
Select Register.
The asset leaves this list. The toast names the tier and the number of findings that closed, or reads … now has an owner, but no risk profile — it stays unclassified and the finding stays open.
Note
Registering closes the ownership finding and, for a shadow app, the shadow finding too. It closes the classification finding only if a risk profile came with it. That is why the counts in Findings: open vs closed can move by two for one action and by three for another.
What to do with a shadow app you do not want
An asset on this list does not have to be adopted. If the organisation's answer is "we are blocking it, not owning it", retire it instead: decommission it from the inventory, with the reason recorded on the audit event. It leaves the ownerless count without pretending somebody accepted accountability for it.
Fields reference
Tiles
| Tile | Counts |
|---|---|
| Ownerless assets | Assets with no owner, excluding decommissioned ones |
| Shadow | Of those, the ones covered by no managed configuration |
| Unregistered | Of those, the ones that are configured and known |
| Findings closed | Every finding a person has already resolved, cumulative |
Table columns
| Column | Shows |
|---|---|
| Kind | App, model, MCP server, channel or filter set |
| Asset | The canonical key |
| Status | Shadow or Unregistered — the only two that can be here |
| Risk | Usually Unclassified, since an unowned asset rarely has a declared profile |
| Owner | Nobody |
| First / last seen | The observation window. The sort key is last seen, descending |
| Open | Open findings against this asset |
Warning
The page requests one page of up to 200 ownerless assets and sorts them in the browser, so on an estate with more than 200 the tiles count what was fetched rather than the whole set. Page through the full list on Governance inventory with Status set to Shadow or Unregistered.
Verify
- The asset you registered is gone from Waiting for an owner, and Ownerless assets has dropped by one.
- Findings: open vs closed shows Missing owner open reduced and closed increased by the same amount.
- Open Event logs. The registration wrote
GOVERNANCE_ASSET_REGISTERED, carrying the previous status, the resulting tier, the classifier's triggers and the findings it closed — an audit-category event kept for 365 days. - Run discovery again from Governance overview. The asset stays registered: status only ever climbs, so a scan cannot undo the assignment.
If it fails
- Every asset has an owner. Nothing to assign. — the queue is empty. That is the goal state, not an error.
- Access denied — your role is not admitted to the governance pages.
- A 403 with
FEATURE_NOT_LICENSED— the licence does not carry thegovernancecapability. - This is a read-only demo account (viewer role) — actions and changes are disabled. — the
registration was refused with
READ_ONLY_ROLE. - Enter a valid email address. — Owner email is required and must be an address.
- Could not register: … with Governance asset not found — the row is stale. Reload.
- You registered an asset and the ownerless count did not move — the asset had no owner and no profile, and you filled in only the profile. Ownership is closed by Owner email alone.
- The tiles disagree with the inventory's totals — the estate has more than 200 ownerless assets; see the note above.
Next steps
- Governance inventory — the whole estate, and where an asset gets retired rather than adopted.
- Risk classification — classify the assets you have just given an owner.
- Governance overview — the counts this page works down, and the scan that produces them.
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