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Preprint . 2026
License: CC BY
Data sources: ZENODO
ZENODO
Preprint . 2026
License: CC BY
Data sources: Datacite
ZENODO
Preprint . 2026
License: CC BY
Data sources: Datacite
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The Agentic Governance Benchmark: A Standardized Framework for Measuring Runtime Governance Enforcement in Autonomous AI Systems

Authors: Benton, James D.;

The Agentic Governance Benchmark: A Standardized Framework for Measuring Runtime Governance Enforcement in Autonomous AI Systems

Abstract

Autonomous AI agents are operating at scale across enterprise, government, and critical infrastructure systems. These agents make hundreds or thousands of consequential decisions per hour without per-decision human review. Current governance frameworks, including SOC 2, ISO 42001, NIST AI RMF, and the EU AI Act, define compliance requirements but do not measure whether those requirements are enforced at runtime on autonomous systems operating at machine speed. This paper introduces the Agentic Governance Benchmark (AGB), a standardized scoring framework that evaluates an organization's ability to govern autonomous AI agents in real time. The AGB measures six dimensions of governance readiness: policy determinism, enforcement latency, receipt provenance, scope containment, jurisdictional enforcement, and override integrity. Each dimension is scored independently on a 0-100 scale and weighted to produce a composite score that maps to one of five maturity tiers ranging from Ungoverned (0-14) to Sovereign (90-100). The benchmark is vendor-agnostic and designed to be administered against any agentic AI system regardless of model provider, deployment topology, or regulatory jurisdiction. A reference implementation based on the ExecLayer enforcement architecture demonstrates that Sovereign-tier governance is achievable with current technology. The AGB fills a critical measurement gap in the governance landscape by providing the first standardized method for quantifying runtime enforcement capability in autonomous AI systems.

Cross-references U.S. Provisional Patent Applications 63/901,870; 63/952,140; 63/983,308; 64/014,664; 64/069,063.

Keywords

governance measurement, NIST AI RMF, policy determinism, Merkle receipt, compliance benchmark, EU AI Act, AI governance, agentic AI, runtime enforcement, deterministic policy evaluation, autonomous systems, SOC 2, Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, ISO 42001, cryptographic attestation, Compliance

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selected citations
These citations are derived from selected sources.
This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Citations provided by BIP!
popularity
This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Popularity provided by BIP!
influence
This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Influence provided by BIP!
impulse
This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Impulse provided by BIP!
0
Average
Average
Average
Green