Data Safety Changes
Every release that touches data collection, sharing, access, retention, or automation gets a formal safety entry.
Change ID format: DS-YYYY-MM-##
This process creates a durable audit trail for ethics, security, and product review.
Required fields per change
- Feature/area and concise change summary.
- Why the change was made (business, legal, or security reason).
- Data impact (new fields, sharing changes, retention changes).
- Risk delta: increased, neutral, or reduced.
- Controls added or updated (technical and policy).
- User notice and consent impact flags.
- Rollback plan with named owner.
- Ethics, security, and product sign-off.
Release gate
No high-risk data feature ships without completing every step.
No high-risk data feature is released without:
- Data Safety Change Log entry.
- Policy impact review.
- Ethics + security + product approval.
Engineer creates a DS entry with change summary, reason, and data impact fields completed.
Security lead assigns risk delta: increased, neutral, or reduced. High-risk changes require full review.
Technical controls and policy updates documented. Rollback plan named with an owner.
Ethics, security, and product each sign off independently. No feature clears on partial approval.
Staged rollout to a subset of environments. Monitoring active before full release proceeds.
Full release with active monitoring. DS log entry updated with post-release status.