Solution · Digital Governance & Compliance

Determine your readiness in March, rather than the week before assessment

Compliance managed as an annual project produces an annual period of urgent remediation. This solution converts standards into an operating cycle: owned controls, evidence captured at the point of creation, and continuously visible readiness.

Explore this solutionSee X.Qiyas
Digital Compliance & MaturityTalk to X-Shift

Overview

Turn the standard into an operating model

The shift is from documenting compliance to operating it.

X-Shift maps the applicable standards and controls, assigns them to the departments and owners able to satisfy them, defines the evidence each control requires, and embeds the submission, review and validation cycle within a platform. The result is an organisation that can report its readiness position at any point, and a compliance function that dedicates its time to closing gaps rather than pursuing attachments.

The platform is X.Qiyas, built by X-Shift against the national frameworks for which it is used. When a control set is revised, it is modelled as a new version and the previous cycle's evidence is retained intact. There is no dependency on an international vendor to add a Saudi framework to a global roadmap.

Key features

Key features

01

Standards and controls

The applicable standards are structured into domains, controls and criteria, with version history retained.

and 5 more below

Digital Compliance & MaturityIllustrative
FEATURE Standards and controls Control CTRL-04.2 Ownership model QIYAS NORA ISO 27001 Owner Department head Evidence Policy document, approval record Cycle Current measurement cycle Status Validated Accepted Control illustrative

Validation workflow

Submission, review, rework and approval are routed automatically, with reminders and escalation.

Readiness measurement

Scoring is performed against the standard's own model and presented by control, domain, department and entity.

Dashboards

Operational views are provided for owners and compliance teams, and summary views for executives and audit committees.

In practice

The evidence request that arrives in week one

01

Evidence is attached to its control when the work is performed, with its author, date and version retained.

02

The compliance team can identify which controls are evidenced and which are not, months before the window opens.

03

The submission is assembled from what is already validated, rather than from a reconstruction exercise.

The scenario An assessment window opens and the compliance team issues the customary email requesting evidence from sixty control owners. Half of what is returned was produced nine months ago, and nobody can now state which version of the policy was in force at the time.

This is X.Qiyas maintaining the control model and its evidence chain. It does not render an unsatisfied control compliant, and a control without an owner will still be shown as a gap, which is the intent.

The challenge

The standard is known. The readiness is not.

This is a test of whether the problem lies in understanding or in operation. Organisations rarely fail assessment because the requirement was not understood; they fail because nobody could state, in the intervening months, how much of it was satisfied.

HOW IT WORKS TODAY Compliance managed as a project Requirements tracked in spreadsheets and shared folders Evidence collected by email in the weeks before submission Control ownership assumed rather than assigned Readiness estimated rather than measured Audit trails reconstructed after the fact The same gaps recurring cycle after cycle WHAT IT BECOMES Compliance managed as an operation Standards and controls held as structured, versioned records Each control assigned to a named owner with a due date Evidence attached to its control at the moment it is produced Validation recorded, with status and reviewer comment Readiness scored continuously by domain and department Gap closure managed as tracked work with an owner

The cycle

A cycle that repeats, not a project that ends

01

Standards

Regulations, frameworks and internal policies are modelled as structured, versioned records, providing a single source of truth per control.

02

Assignments

Every control is mapped to a named owner and a department, with due dates and escalation paths established before the cycle opens.

03

Execution

Controls are performed as day-to-day work, with the evidence each requires defined in advance rather than requested retrospectively.

04

Evidence

Documents, screenshots and sign-offs are attached to the control they satisfy at the point of creation.

05

Validation

Compliance managers review submissions, request rework where needed, and record approval against the control.

06

Readiness

Continuous scoring by domain, department and entity, visible on any date rather than reconstructed in the week before assessment.

07

Improvement

Gaps are closed as tracked work with owners and dates, and the previous cycle's findings directly inform the next cycle's priorities.

Outcomes

What changes for the organisation

What this changes

The most significant change is that the compliance conversation shifts from the submission deadline to the operating year.

01

Readiness reportable at any point in the cycle

02

Evidence collected as a by-product of work rather than as a separate exercise

03

Accountability visible by department and by individual control

04

Audit trails complete because they were recorded, not reconstructed

05

Recurring gaps identified and closed rather than repeated

06

Executive reporting that informs investment decisions

Frameworks

More than one standard, concurrently

The difficulty in stating readiness rarely stems from a single framework. It typically stems from several, assessed by different bodies on different cycles, against evidence that largely overlaps.

01

Mapped, not duplicated

Controls that appear in more than one framework are evidenced once and satisfy each of them, rather than being addressed separately by three teams.

Digital Compliance & MaturityIllustrative
FEATURE Mapped, not duplicated Control CTRL-04.2 Mapped, not duplicated QIYAS NORA ISO 27001 Owner Department head Evidence Policy document, approval record Cycle Current measurement cycle Status Validated Accepted Control illustrative

Use cases

Where readiness is currently estimated

Each situation describes an organisation that understands the requirement and cannot state how much of it is satisfied today.

01

A multi-entity ministry reporting one position with X.Qiyas

Situation

A ministry with twelve affiliated entities is required to report one readiness position against a national framework, and each entity maintains its evidence in its own folders.

What happens
  1. Map the control
  2. Assign the owner
  3. Capture the evidence
  4. Validate and score
Outcome

X.Qiyas maintains one control model across the entities, so that group readiness is an aggregation rather than a reconciliation exercise.

Commonly applied in Government and across other sectors

02

Overlapping controls across several standards with X.Qiyas

Situation

The same access control is evidenced three times for three different regulatory frameworks, by three teams, using three slightly different descriptions of the same arrangement.

What happens
  1. Map the control
  2. Assign the owner
  3. Capture the evidence
  4. Validate and score
Outcome

One piece of evidence is mapped to every control it satisfies, and the duplicated effort ceases to be invisible.

Commonly applied in Banking and across other sectors

03

Controls assigned to a department with X.Qiyas

Situation

A clinical information control is assigned to a department rather than a named individual, so every reminder reaches a shared mailbox for which nobody accepts responsibility.

What happens
  1. Map the control
  2. Assign the owner
  3. Capture the evidence
  4. Validate and score
Outcome

Each control carries a named owner with a due date, and unassigned controls are shown as gaps rather than going unnoticed.

Commonly applied in Healthcare and across other sectors

More ways to apply it

Readiness reported by estimation with X.Qiyas

Readiness is scored from validated evidence per control, so the reported figure is defensible when the assessor asks how it was derived.

Education

The same gaps recurring each cycle with X.Qiyas

Gap closure is planned between cycles with an owner and a date, so a repeat finding becomes an exception.

Utilities

A control set revised mid-cycle with X.Qiyas

The revision is recorded as a new version, with the prior cycle's evidence still attached to the control it satisfied.

Telecommunications
Explore by industry

These are illustrative applications rather than client programmes. Which of these applies depends on the number of frameworks under which you operate and the extent to which control ownership is already established.

Why we build this

Why X-Shift owns the compliance platform

Built against the frameworks in use locally

National digital government and sector frameworks change on their own schedule and in Arabic. X.Qiyas models them as native control sets rather than mapping them into a generic risk product's taxonomy, which would lose the structure the assessor expects.

Evidence that survives a version change

Control sets are revised between cycles, and most tools manage this by starting again. Because X-Shift owns the data model, a revision is recorded as a new version, with the prior cycle's evidence and validation history still attached to what it satisfied.

Reporting in the assessor's own format

Readiness must be reported in the manner in which the standard scores it, not as a dashboard template dictates. Owning the scoring model enables the output to match the submission format rather than being re-cut manually each cycle.

Before you evaluate

What to establish first

Common questions

What buyers ask before committing

Next

Where to go next

Model one domain and review the readiness position

Select a single control domain, model it with its owners and evidence requirements, and review the readiness position produced from what is already held today.

Applicable where a framework is in force and there is no continuous view of your position against it.

Request a modelling session

Establish the compliance model first

DGA Compliance Advisory establishes the control mapping, the ownership model and the evidence standard, which determines whether the platform records progress or confusion.

Applicable where control ownership has never been formally assigned.

DGA Compliance Advisory

Most organisations require the advisory route first; a platform applied to an unowned control set produces a tidier version of the same problem, and X-Shift will advise accordingly where this is the case.

Where this sits

Related

Designed byDGA Compliance AdvisoryThe advisory expertise behind the model.
Designed byDigital Maturity & Transformation StrategyFrom assessment to transformation roadmap.
Runs onX.QiyasDigital compliance and governance platform.
Designed byDigital Governance & Operating ModelDecision rights and governance structures.

Also relevantGovernmentData Governance & Management

Technology that enables it

What this is built on

These are platforms that X-Shift builds and supports. Where your estate already covers one of these, the engagement becomes integration and operating model work rather than a platform deployment, and X-Shift will advise accordingly.

Digital Compliance & Governance Platform

Compliance as a continuous operation, not an annual scramble.

Explore
Readiness by domain Illustrative
READINESS BY DOMAIN Strategy & governance Digital services Data management Cybersecurity Digital capabilities Innovation Scored continuously, not at the submission window CONTROL Access rights are reviewed each quarter Owner assigned Validated Department Information Technology Due Within the cycle Reviewed by the named owner, with the reviewer recorded EVIDENCE CHAIN Access review register Produced by the owner Approval record Signed within the cycle Exception log Two accepted, both dated

Is this the capability you require?

Describe what is not working today, and we will advise whether this is the right answer, a smaller piece of work, or an entirely different problem.

Start a conversation