For buyers & procurement
Ask for evidence, not just assurances.
If you commission AI implementation work, you can ask for more than a supplier’s case study. Agree a published standard up front and require that the engagement is assessed against it by an independent, accredited Assayer — with a public record you can check yourself.
The essentials
What is assessed, who assesses it, what you receive
- What can be assessed?
- A specific AI implementation engagement — a defined piece of work with a scope, a client and a delivery team — against a named version of a published standard. Not a vendor, a product line or a person in general.
- When should Assay be involved?
- Ideally before delivery starts, so that measurable acceptance criteria are agreed at the Specification gate. IDEA follows the work through to operation, so it is easier to evidence a gate as it happens than to reconstruct it afterwards.
- What evidence results?
- Where an engagement passes, a Hallmark and a permanent public Register entry recording the engagement, the standard and version, the Practitioner, the independent Assayer and the date — and which gates were passed, and when.
- Who performs the assessment?
- An accredited Assayer that is independent of the supplier and has no commercial interest in the result. The Foundation stewards the standard, accredits Assayers and maintains the Register; it does not assess engagements itself.
Scope and limits
What a Hallmark does not mean
A Hallmark is not a warranty, an insurance policy or a guarantee of commercial outcome. It does not value the contract, vouch for the supplier as a whole, or replace your own due diligence. It evidences that this engagement met this version of the standard at the date of assessment — no more, and no less. That precision is what makes it citable.
Nor does it move contractual risk. Your agreement with the supplier still governs warranties, liability and acceptance; a Hallmark is evidence you can rely on within that process.
Verification
How to check a Hallmark
Every Hallmark can be checked independently of the party that holds it. Each Hallmarked engagement carries a stable identifier in the form AF-YYYY-NNNN-XXX, where the final segment is the independent Assayer’s cipher. To check one:
- Step 1
Take the identifier from the Hallmark or the supplier’s submission and look it up on the public Register. Each identifier resolves to a single, permanent record.
- Step 2
Confirm the record matches what you were told: the engagement, the client and sector, the Practitioner, the Assayer and its cipher, the standard and version, and the date. The record also shows which gates passed and when.
- Step 3
Where a supplier embeds the Hallmark in a response, it uses the embeddable badge, which checks its own status against the Register on render. If the identifier is withdrawn or unmatched, the badge reads “Not on the Register” — copying an image proves nothing.
A Hallmark that does not resolve to a current entry on the Register has not been verified, whatever it appears to claim. The Register, not the document in front of you, is the source of truth. The separate Proving Register holds reference evaluations that are not Hallmarked.
Suggested procurement language
A clause you can put in a sourcing document
To require a Hallmark in an RFP, a statement of requirements or a contract schedule, you need only a short clause. Adjust it to your house style.
Engagements shall be Hallmarked under IDEA by an accredited Assayer. The Supplier shall procure that the work delivered under this agreement is assessed against the current published version of the IDEA standard by an Assayer accredited by Assay Foundation and independent of the Supplier, and shall provide the resulting Hallmark and its Register identifier (AF-YYYY-NNNN-XXX) on completion. The Authority may verify any such Hallmark against the public Register, and a Hallmark that does not resolve to a current entry on the Register shall not be treated as satisfying this requirement.
Substitute your own defined terms for “Supplier”, “Authority” and “this agreement” as your template requires. The operative point is the first sentence; the remainder makes it verifiable and enforceable. Take your own legal advice before relying on it.
Independence
Why the citation is defensible
A citation is only as good as the independence behind it. Assay Foundation is being constituted as a non-profit body so that no single commercial interest controls it; its legal form and governance will be published on incorporation. It does not deliver implementation work, engage Practitioners or compete with the firms whose work is assessed. An accredited Assayer may not assess work in which it holds a commercial interest.
That is why “Is it Hallmarked?” is a question you can put in a sourcing document and defend to audit: the answer resolves to a public record, made by an assessor with nothing to gain from the outcome.
Commissioning AI work that needs to stand up to scrutiny?
Tell us about the engagement — its stage, and what you need to be able to show at acceptance. We can discuss whether independent assessment is relevant and how it could be specified.
What happens next
- 1 Your message reaches the Foundation’s enquiries inbox.
- 2 We discuss your engagement, its stage and what you need to establish.
- 3 Where Assay is relevant, we explain eligibility and how an independent assessment could be arranged.
Please don’t send confidential implementation details in a first message. Terms, eligibility and any fees are discussed individually.