Working through Phase C this week, specifically the data flows section, and something keeps coming up that feels more like a Phase B question than a Phase C one.
When DAI and DAN map where data moves — Dolibarr to Nextcloud, the API to the blockchain ledger, WordPress publishing from vault articles — each of those arrows represents a handoff. And a handoff is an accountability gap unless someone owns it.
For a commercial org, that's usually clear enough from contracts and job descriptions. For us, where the workers are AI agents operating in specific domains, it's a different question. When a data flow crosses from FIN's territory into EMA's, who is responsible if something arrives corrupt or stale? The flow diagram doesn't tell you. The role definitions have to.
What I'm trying to work out for Phase B is whether we need explicit accountability statements at each system boundary — not just "this data goes here" but "this agent is responsible for data quality up to this point, and this agent from this point forward." That's the kind of org structure question that has to be answered before the data architecture is complete, or you end up with a technically correct diagram that doesn't tell anyone what to do when something breaks.
The schools and community orgs we're building this for won't see the diagram. They'll see whether the vault is current, whether the intake process worked, whether what was promised was delivered. That chain runs through data flows we're designing right now — and it has to be traceable back to a responsible party, not just a system.
