TWP

Governance

The Witness Protocol Foundation is a Dutch non-profit (stichting) governed by a three-body structure designed to prevent capture, ensure methodological integrity, and maintain public accountability.

Governing Principles

Seriousness over speed. We will not rush methodology to produce outputs.

Transparency over reputation. We publish our failures before our successes.

Independence over scale. We will remain small rather than compromise methodology.

Specificity over coverage. We prefer 50 deeply examined testimonies to 5,000 shallow ones.

Humility over certainty. We claim methodological rigor, not methodological correctness.

Governance Structure

Board of Directors

Strategic oversight and fiduciary governance

  • Approve annual budget and research priorities
  • Appoint SAC and HCC leadership
  • Maintain conflict of interest registry
  • Publish quarterly governance reports
  • Ensure compliance with ANBI requirements

Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC)

Methodological integrity and research standards

  • Approve and version the evaluation rubric
  • Set Gate threshold parameters
  • Review Inquisitor prompt design (Project Icarus)
  • Validate inter-rater agreement methodology
  • Audit annotation quality and corpus fitness

Human Curation Council (HCC)

Operational testimony processing and annotation

  • Conduct Gate Tier 3 alpha reviews (single reviewer)
  • Apply CAP/REL/FELT annotation framework
  • Develop inter-rater agreement methodology (Vision: κ ≥ 0.8)
  • Flag systemic biases in corpus composition
  • Report annotation challenges to the SAC

Policy Framework

Data Governance & Ethics Policy

Defines PII handling, consent architecture, data minimization principles, and the three-layer privacy model (Identity Vault → De-identified Corpus → Published Archive).

Conflict of Interest Framework

All governance members must declare financial, institutional, and ideological conflicts. Declarations are logged immutably and published in redacted form.

Consent Revocation Protocol

Any contributor may revoke consent at any time. Revocation cascades through all linked records: testimony, annotations, and Inquisitor transcripts are permanently deleted.

Failure Publication Mandate

All significant failures — methodological, technical, or ethical — are published in the Failure Log within 72 hours of discovery. No exceptions.

Independence Clause

No single funder, partner, or government may influence the Protocol's methodology, contributor selection, or published outputs. The Foundation reserves the right to refuse any funding with conditions.

ANBI Compliance

As a Dutch stichting seeking ANBI status, the Foundation commits to public benefit principles: no private enrichment, transparent financial reporting, and mission-aligned expenditure.

Governance charter v1.0 · Published April 2026 · Subject to revision by the Board