GovSCH: An Open-Source Schema for Authoring Cybersecurity and AI Governance Documents

The increasing complexity of cybersecurity and artificial intelligence (AI) executive orders, frameworks, and policies has made translating high-level directives into actionable implementation a persistent challenge. Policymakers, framework authors, and engineering teams often lack a unified approach for interpreting and operationalizing these documents, resulting in inefficiencies, misalignment, and delayed compliance. While existing standards such as the Open Security Controls Assessment Language (OSCAL) address control-level specifications, no standardized, machine-readable format exists for authoring and structuring high-level governance documents. This gap hinders collaboration across disciplines and obscures critical directives’ underlying intent and rationale.

This report introduces Governance Schema (GovSCH), an open-source schema designed to standardize the authoring and translation of cybersecurity and AI governance documents into a consistent, machine-readable format. By analyzing prior executive orders, regulatory frameworks, and policies, GovSCH identifies common structures and authoring practices to create an interoperable model that bridges policymakers, regulatory framework authors, and engineering teams. This approach enables more precise articulation of policy intent, improves transparency, and accelerates the technical implementation of regulations. Ultimately, GovSCH aims to enhance collaboration, standardization, and efficiency in cybersecurity and AI governance. To explore the schema structure, documentation, and examples, please visit the project’s GitHub repository: newamericafoundation/GovSCH.