Plain language
Standards and templates should be written for people who may not have formal legal, security, compliance, or operations backgrounds.
Governance
How the project is maintained.
Small Organization Records Framework is currently an early public draft. This page explains how the project approaches editorial review, versioning, contribution boundaries, and future governance.
The project is still developing. Governance may change as the standards, templates, contributors, and public structure become clearer.
Current status
Early public draft.
Small Organization Records Framework is not yet a formal standards body, certification program, membership association, or accredited organization. The current project is a public documentation initiative publishing early standards, templates, and educational resources.
The materials are being developed carefully, but they should be treated as draft resources that may change over time.
Editorial principles
The standards should remain practical, safe, and understandable.
The project is guided by a few simple editorial principles. These principles help keep the standards useful for small organizations without turning them into heavy compliance documents.
Practical use
The project should focus on records that people can realistically maintain, review, and use during normal operations or disruptions.
Safe documentation
Templates should avoid encouraging people to store passwords, API keys, recovery codes, sensitive records, or private information in unsafe places.
Clear boundaries
The project should avoid presenting general documentation resources as legal, tax, financial, insurance, cybersecurity, compliance, or incident-response advice.
Versioned improvement
Changes should be made carefully, with version numbers and plain explanations where possible.
Global awareness
The project should avoid assuming that every organization uses the same laws, tools, terminology, business structures, or local practices.
Versioning
Standards and templates are versioned.
Version numbers help readers understand whether a standard or template is an early draft, stable release, or revised version.
A simple versioning pattern is used: 0.x means early draft, 1.0 means first stable public version, and later versions indicate revisions, clarifications, or expansions.
Review boundaries
What the project does not verify.
Small Organization Records Framework does not review, approve, audit, certify, or validate how any organization uses the standards or templates.
The project does not determine whether an organization is compliant, secure, protected, operationally resilient, legally prepared, financially prepared, or properly insured.
Organizations are responsible for deciding whether the materials are appropriate for their situation and for seeking qualified professional guidance where needed.
Future governance
The project may evolve over time.
If the project grows, future governance may include contributor guidelines, public issue tracking, editorial review notes, release histories, translation guidance, advisory contributors, or a more formal public-benefit structure.
For now, the priority is to publish clear draft standards, make the templates useful, and review the materials carefully before treating anything as stable.