All governance templates →← How do we monitor voluntary AI safety commitments and respond when they change?

Implementation Kit

AI Vendor Safety Commitment Register and Review Template

Tracking the voluntary safety commitments that shaped a procurement decision, and reacting when they change. A commitment register, a monitoring configuration, a materiality threshold definition, and a re-assessment template.

Who this is for: The vendor risk owner who bought partly on the strength of a vendor's safety pledges and needs to know if they hold.

Download the kit (Markdown) ↓4 artifacts. Every table also copies as CSV.

1. Vendor safety commitment register

Spreadsheet

The specific commitments that mattered at procurement, and whether each is currently verified.

Template

Vendor	Commitment	Source	Material to our decision?	Last verified	Current status
<vendor>	<specific pledge>	<policy page, gov registry, framework>	Yes / No	YYYY-MM-DD	Verified / Weakened / Withdrawn / Unclear

Worked example

Vendor	Commitment	Source	Material?	Last verified	Current status
VendorLM	Pre-deployment third-party red-teaming of frontier models	Vendor safety policy v3	Yes	2026-08-15	Verified
VendorLM	Publish model cards with safety eval results	Vendor blog	Yes	2026-08-15	Weakened (last two releases: summary only)
FraudCo	SOC 2 Type II maintained annually	Trust centre	Yes	2026-06-15	Verified
FraudCo	Signatory to a national AI safety framework	Government registry	No	2026-06-15	Verified

Acceptance criteria

✓Commitments are specific and checkable, not "takes safety seriously".
✓Each is marked material or not, so monitoring effort goes where it counts.
✓Every material commitment has a verification date within the review cycle.

2. Monitoring configuration

Spreadsheet

The feeds and cadence that would tell you a commitment changed, per vendor.

Template

Vendor	Feeds monitored	Alert type	Review frequency	Owner
<vendor>	safety blog RSS; gov commitment registry; leadership changes; benchmark result pages	email / digest	monthly / quarterly	<name>

Worked example

Vendor	Feeds monitored	Alert type	Review frequency	Owner
VendorLM	safety policy page (change-watch); model release notes; AI safety index	change-watch email	monthly	Vendor Risk
FraudCo	trust centre; SOC 2 bridge letters; funding news	quarterly digest	quarterly	Vendor Risk

Acceptance criteria

✓Each material vendor has at least one automated feed, not only an annual manual check.
✓The review frequency matches the vendor's risk tier.
✓An owner is named per vendor and alerts route to them.

3. Materiality threshold definition

Document

The line between a commitment change you note and one that forces a formal re-assessment.

Template

Agree with Legal and the system owner. Apply consistently.

A commitment change triggers a formal vendor re-assessment when any of these are true:

The commitment was material to the original procurement decision, and it has been weakened or withdrawn
A safety practice we relied on (pre-deployment testing, red-teaming, disclosure) is reduced in scope or frequency
The vendor exits a framework or registry we cited in our own compliance position
Key safety leadership departs and the commitment's ownership is unclear for more than 60 days
A benchmark or index we track shows a material regression in the vendor's safety posture

Below the threshold: log the change in the register, note it at the next scheduled review, no immediate action.

Worked example

Applied to VendorLM's model-card change:

Material to procurement: yes (we cited their published safety evals in our own risk assessment).
Change: disclosure reduced from full eval results to a summary.
Threshold met: yes, clause 2 (a disclosure practice we relied on was reduced in scope).
Action: formal re-assessment opened 2026-08-20.

Acceptance criteria

✓The triggers are specific enough that two reviewers would agree whether one fired.
✓The definition is agreed with Legal and applied the same way across vendors.
✓Sub-threshold changes are still logged, not discarded.

4. Commitment-change re-assessment template

Document

The record produced when a threshold is crossed, feeding the renewal decision.

Template

One to two pages. Links to the contract renewal decision.

Vendor and commitment affected:
What changed, with a source and date:
Which of our uses relied on this commitment:
Impact on our risk position: what protection or assurance we have lost
Options: accept with monitoring / seek contractual replacement / add compensating controls / reduce reliance / exit
Recommendation and rationale:
Contract implications: clauses to add at renewal, or grounds to renegotiate
Decision, decision owner, and date:
Follow-up actions with owners and dates:

Worked example

Vendor / commitment: VendorLM, published model-card safety eval results
What changed: last two releases shipped with summary-only safety sections (blog, 2026-08-12)
Our reliance: we cited their eval disclosures in the fraud-scoring risk assessment and in a customer trust doc
Impact: we can no longer independently sanity-check their safety evals; our own documentation now overstates the assurance
Options considered: accept with monitoring; require eval detail under NDA; add our own pre-production testing
Recommendation: require eval detail under NDA at renewal, and add a lightweight internal eval now
Contract implications: add a disclosure clause (eval methodology + results under NDA) to the renewal
Decision: approved by Head of Vendor Risk, 2026-08-27
Follow-up: internal eval stood up (MLOps, 2026-09-20); renewal redline drafted (Legal, 2026-10-01); trust doc corrected (Comms, 2026-09-05)

Acceptance criteria

✓The re-assessment states concretely what assurance was lost, not just that a change occurred.
✓It lists real options and a recommendation, not only a description.
✓The outcome connects to the contract renewal decision and has follow-up actions with owners.

Governance controls this kit produces evidence for

Completing the artifacts above gives you a head start on the evidence requirements for these controls.

PRC-006

Vendor Safety Commitment Verification

The register and its verification dates are the vendor safety commitment verification record.

PRC-007

Vendor Governance Change Monitoring

The monitoring configuration is the vendor governance-change monitoring setup.

PRC-012

AI Safety Index and Benchmark Monitoring

Tracking a safety index or benchmark per vendor implements safety-index and benchmark monitoring.

PRC-008

Vendor Model Update Disclosure and Re-Assessment Protocol

The re-assessment template handles vendor disclosure changes that warrant re-assessment.

PRC-002

AI Contractual Requirements

The "contract implications" section drives commitment-notification and disclosure clauses into renewals.

This kit backs one playbook. Read the full guidance for the reasoning behind each artifact.