FCC for Policy Makers¶
Welcome to the FCC (Find → Create → Critique) tutorial track designed specifically for policy makers, regulatory staff, legislative aides, public-sector program officers, and anyone whose work touches AI governance, algorithmic accountability, or digital-public-services oversight. This track treats the FCC framework not as a software engineering tool, but as an evidence-producing instrument whose outputs can be used to inform policy decisions, draft regulatory guidance, prepare briefings for elected officials, and scope independent audits.
Why FCC matters to policy¶
Every policy decision that touches AI — from procurement rules for government systems, to accessibility mandates, to high-stakes sector regulation (health, finance, justice) — must rest on defensible evidence. FCC produces three kinds of evidence that policy workflows consume:
- Classified risk posture — Each persona in an FCC deployment carries a
RiskCategoryclassification aligned to the EU AI Act (Regulation 2024/1689), bridged to NIST AI RMF. This means a policy reviewer can ask "which parts of this system are high-risk, which are limited-risk?" and get a machine-verifiable answer. - Evidence graphs and compliance reports — The
compliancemodule emitsComplianceReportartifacts with linked evidence items, findings, and remediation status. These serialize to JSON-LD and feed directly into policy impact assessments. - Model cards and datasheets — Following Mitchell et al. (model cards) and Gebru et al. (datasheets), FCC auto-generates 173 documentation artifacts. Policy staff can read the card before drafting a rule.
How this track is organized¶
| Page | Focus | Reading time |
|---|---|---|
| Getting Started | First-time orientation, no coding required | 15 min |
| Audit Primer | What an FCC audit produces and how to read it | 20 min |
| Policy Brief Generation | Turn FCC outputs into one-page briefs | 25 min |
| Compliance Walkthrough | End-to-end EU AI Act / NIST AI RMF trace | 30 min |
| Ecosystem Glossary | Plain-language definitions of FCC concepts | reference |
| Further Reading | Regulations, ADRs, sister-project docs | reference |
Prerequisites¶
No coding required. You should, however, be comfortable reading:
- Short YAML front-matter blocks (the same structure used at the top of this page)
- Tables of requirements mapped to evidence items
- Simple Mermaid diagrams (we explain them inline)
If you have ever written a Statement of Work, scoped an external audit, or drafted an impact assessment, you have all the analytical skills this track needs.
What you will be able to do¶
After finishing this track you will be able to:
- Commission a risk audit of an FCC-based system and read the resulting
ComplianceReport - Draft a two-page policy brief using the model cards and evidence graph as the backing evidence
- Identify whether a system deploys high-risk, limited-risk, or minimal-risk personas
- Explain to a non-technical elected official what "R.I.S.C.E.A.R." means, why the ten components matter, and which are load-bearing for policy
- Cross-walk an FCC deployment to both EU AI Act articles and NIST AI RMF subcategories
How FCC fits in the larger ecosystem¶
FCC is the authority-owning project for the R.I.S.C.E.A.R. specification. Sister projects (POLARIS, LYRA, and the 10 constellation verticals — Ophiuchus, Serpens, Libra, Crater, Scutum, Norma, Pyxis, Vela, Columba, Caelum) consume FCC vocabulary through a documented plugin contract. From a policy standpoint, this matters because: when an agency deploys a vertical system such as Ophiuchus (finance) or Serpens (health), the risk posture is inherited from FCC's persona definitions. You only need to understand FCC once to assess any constellation-vertical deployment.
See the codename decoder (if present) and the archetype atlas for the canonical mapping.
Where to go next¶
If you have a specific audit in front of you, skip to Audit Primer. If you are starting from zero, proceed to Getting Started. If you already know FCC and need to write the brief this afternoon, jump to Policy Brief Generation.
Cross-reference: ADR-0004 Compliance Framework, ADR-0005 Evidence Graph.