Inheritance & Scoping

GOVERN uses a hierarchical policy model. Policies at a higher level in the hierarchy apply to all systems below them. Lower-level policies can override specific settings.

Scope hierarchy

Organization
  └── Team / Business Unit
        └── Environment (prod / staging / dev)
              └── Individual System

How inheritance works

A system inherits the policy of its closest ancestor that has one configured. If a system has no policy directly attached, it inherits from its environment. If the environment has no policy, it inherits from the team. If the team has no policy, it inherits from the organization default.

Overriding inherited settings

A child policy can override any scorer threshold or enforcement mode from its parent. Overrides are visible in the policy editor — overridden settings are highlighted with the parent value shown for comparison.

Locked settings

Policy administrators can lock specific settings at the organization level. Locked settings cannot be overridden by lower-level policies. This ensures minimum governance standards are always enforced across the entire organization.