Introducing MLOps

Chapter 8. Model Governance

Mark Treveil

We explored the idea of governance as a set of controls placed on a business in Chapter 3. These goals aim to ensure that the business delivers on its responsibilities to all stakeholders, from shareholders and employees to the public and national governments. The responsibilities include financial, legal, and ethical, and are all underpinned by the desire for fairness.

This chapter goes even more in depth on these topics, shifting from why they matter to how organizations can incorporate them as a part of their MLOps strategy.

Who Decides What Governance the Organization Needs?

National regulations are a key part of a society’s framework for safeguarding fairness. But these take considerable time to be agreed upon and implemented; they always reflect a slightly historical understanding of fairness and the challenges to it. Just as with ML models, the past cannot always anticipate the evolving problems of the future.

What most businesses want from governance is to safeguard shareholder investment and to help ensure a suitable ROI, both now and in the future. That means the business has to perform effectively, profitability, and sustainably. The shareholders need clear visibility that customers, employees, and regulatory bodies are happy, and they want reassurances that appropriate measures are in place to detect and manage any difficulties that could occur in the future.

None of this is news, of course, nor specific to MLOps. What is different ...