Every policy rests on an authority. Most institutions cannot show which one.
KAI is a Virginia consulting practice working with state agencies, counties, universities, and regulated organizations. We map what you hold, trace each document back to the law or regulation that governs it, and show you where the chain has broken. Every finding carries its source and the date we checked it.
- Statute Virginia Public Records Act Va. Code § 42.1-76 et seq.
- Regulation Records management standards 17 VAC 15-10
- Agency guidance General retention schedule Library of Virginia, GS-19
- Local policy Departmental retention policy Cites a schedule superseded in 2021 Chain broken
- AuthorityStatutes, regulations, and the citations that bind.
- RelationshipHow one document depends on another.
- VerifiedRetrieved from source and logged with a date.
- BreakA citation that no longer resolves.
Each status carries a shape and a word as well as a color, because color alone is not an accessible way to convey meaning. The same rule governs every chart and table we deliver.
Services
Fixed scope, fixed price, and a written deliverable you keep. We do not need access to your systems. You supply the documents, or point us at what is already public.
The report is not an audit that expires. It is a governed baseline, structured so it can be re-evaluated when the authorities underneath it change.
-
Knowledge Architecture Assessment
An inventory of what you hold, an authority map showing which instruments bind and on whom, the citation chains that are broken, the content resting on superseded sources, and the places where two of your own documents disagree.
$9,500Two to three weeks -
Extended Assessment
The same method across a wider body of documents, with a remediation roadmap and cost model attached. For corpora that genuinely exceed three weeks of work.
$14,500 – $24,000Four to five weeks -
Custom Body of Knowledge
We build your body of knowledge from your statutes, regulations, policies, and handbooks: the domain model, the governed objects, the citation and provenance chains, and the links to adjacent material. You own the result.
$45,000 – $200,000Eight to twenty weeks -
Managed Currency
Law changes and your documents do not. We monitor the authorities underneath your body of knowledge and update it when they move, with a human review step on every change. This is what the baseline in your assessment is built to support.
$2,000 – $7,500Per month -
Advisory Retainer
Rolling access for an organization building its own knowledge governance capability. Design review, authority modeling, and a standing call.
$4,000 – $8,000Per month
Method
Three stages, run in order. You cannot trace what you have not found, judge what you have not traced, or govern what you have not judged.
-
Inventory
We collect what you hold and record it: every document, its format, its condition, when it was last touched, and who owns it. Most organizations have never seen this list, and producing it is frequently the first finding.
-
Trace
Each document is coded against the authority it claims, whether statute, regulation, guidance, or internal policy, and every citation is traced to source and checked against the current text. We record when we checked and what we checked against.
-
Report
What is broken, what is stale, and where your own documents contradict each other, ordered by consequence rather than by ease of repair. Delivered in a format meeting WCAG 2.1 Level AA.
No assertion reaches a client deliverable unless its source was retrieved during the engagement and the retrieval logged with a date.
Your documents and the model we build from them are yours. We keep our method and our index of public law. We do not retain, license, or resell client material.
What we do not do. We are not lawyers and we do not give legal advice. We are not an accessibility remediation firm: we do not test, audit, or certify conformance, and we do not represent that our work produces compliance with any legal requirement. Those are separate disciplines, and an institution facing a deadline usually needs all three.
Practice
The founder spent a federal career at the National Archives and Records Administration on the governance of authoritative records at scale. The method comes directly out of that work: knowing which document governs, whether it is current, and what happens when the thing underneath it changes.
We are a small practice and we say so. Every engagement is led by the person who will do the work, and we would rather decline than take on more than we can deliver properly.
Accessibility
This site is intended to conform to WCAG 2.1 Level AA. Last reviewed 26 July 2026.
We publish this because we ask clients to publish one, and it would be difficult to argue for something we had not done ourselves. It also lets you check our work before hiring us.
What we have done
- Semantic structure, one page heading, and a correct heading order throughout.
- Visible keyboard focus on every interactive element, and a skip link to the main content.
- Every text and interface color measured against the 4.5:1 and 3:1 thresholds rather than assumed.
- No information conveyed by color alone. Each status in the key above carries a shape and a word.
- Readable and operable to a 320 pixel viewport and at 200 percent zoom.
- Motion limited to short color transitions, suppressed where a reduced motion preference is set.
What we have not done
- No independent third-party audit. The claim above is our own assessment.
- Not tested against every combination of browser and assistive technology.
We wanted every color here to carry a meaning rather than a mood. Navy marks authority: a statute, a regulation, a citation that binds. Teal marks a relationship between documents. Green marks something retrieved from source and logged with a date. Red marks a citation that no longer resolves.
That only works if the meaning reaches everyone, so we measured rather than assumed, and several combinations failed. An early teal sat at the same lightness as our green, leaving the two separated by hue alone. Hue is the first thing to go for the roughly one man in twelve with a color vision deficiency, and under simulation our relationship and verified badges became the same color.
We tested candidates across the full range, checking each against a light surface and against every other badge, before settling on this palette. The shapes and labels stay regardless, because color should reinforce a meaning and never carry it alone.
If you meet a barrier anywhere on this site, tell us and we will fix it. We acknowledge within two business days.
Contact
The most useful first conversation is usually thirty minutes about what you hold and what governs it. If it turns out you already have a register and a clear authority map, we will say so and there is nothing for us to sell.
Knowing roughly how many documents are in scope, and whether they are searchable text or scans, makes the first call substantially more useful.