Model 03
Spreadsheets and shared drives
Manual evidence collection keeps control status in a tracker and supporting proof in folders: screenshots, CSV exports and ticket links gathered by hand before each assessment. DECIMA replaces the collection step with scheduled reads that carry their own timestamp and rule version.
The tracker is not the problem — the hand-collection is. Every artefact starts ageing the moment it is saved, and nothing in the folder says how old it is.
What each model produces
Five dimensions that decide how much of audit season is spent rebuilding the past.
- How evidence arrives
- Spreadsheets and drivesA person opens the system, captures proof and files it.
- DECIMAA scheduled read pulls the state and records it with its read time.
- Provenance of an artefact
- Spreadsheets and drivesInferred from a filename, a folder or someone's memory.
- DECIMACarried on the record: source, read time, rule version, verdict.
- Cost of a second framework
- Spreadsheets and drivesRoughly linear — a new folder tree and a new collection round.
- DECIMAMarginal — the same evidence is evaluated against another rule set.
- Key-person risk
- Spreadsheets and drivesHigh: the structure lives in the head of whoever built it.
- DECIMALow: collection and evaluation are defined configuration, not tacit knowledge.
- Failure mode
- Spreadsheets and drivesStale screenshots presented as current, discovered during fieldwork.
- DECIMAA missing read is an explicit gap on the record before fieldwork.
Where this model is the better fit
Honest limits, so the comparison is usable.
- A single framework, a handful of controls and one owner can be run from a tracker without ceremony, and forcing a pipeline onto that adds cost without adding assurance.
- Genuinely one-off artefacts — a board minute, a signed contract clause, a physical inspection photo — belong in a document store regardless of how the rest is collected.
See it against a real mandate
Each console shows the evidence model applied to one rule set.
04
Questions about this comparison
Answers written to be quoted.
Stop rebuilding last year before every audit
Bring one control you currently screenshot and we will show the same control as a scheduled read.
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