Abstract
This publication discloses methods and systems for ensuring temporal consistency across multi-step decision processes that evaluate organisational decisions against rules and policies drawn from multiple independent sources. In one embodiment, a temporal reference is captured at the initiation of a decision process and carried through all subsequent evaluation steps, ensuring that every step observes the policy environment as it existed at a consistent policy snapshot. Temporal markers obtained from policy sources are treated as opaque — their internal structure is not interpreted by the decision system — and freshness comparison determines whether one marker represents a state at least as recent as another. In one embodiment, when the policy environment draws from multiple heterogeneous sources, the temporal reference encompasses a per-source collection of opaque temporal markers, and multi-source consistency verification evaluates freshness independently for each source, considering the environment current only when every source satisfies its own relative ordering check. In one embodiment, before execution proceeds based on a completed decision process, a pre-authorization currency verification compares the captured temporal reference against the current policy state to confirm the policy environment has not been superseded, addressing the time-of-check to time-of-use problem (TOCTOU) through optimistic locking patterns. The response to detected staleness is configurable: some contexts require strict denial, others permit advisory continuation, and others trigger re-evaluation with comparison. In one embodiment, differential temporal binding allows policy evaluation to be pinned to the captured temporal reference while security-critical validity checks track the current invalidation state, resolving the tension between temporal pinning for multi-step governance consistency and real-time responsiveness for revocation checking. The disclosed methods parallel long-running transaction management and saga coordination patterns used in distributed systems, applying bounded staleness guarantees and pre- commit validation to organisational policy evaluation rather than database state, and the differential binding approach shares structural similarities with certificate revocation checking in PKI where currency verification must be verified against current state even when other credential attributes are evaluated against a pinned issuance-time reference. Temporal consistency is treated as a configurable, additive governance property rather than a fixed infrastructure requirement, enabling configurable consistency levels per organisational context.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Winchester, Jayson, "Snapshot Isolation for Policy Evaluation — Temporal Consistency Across Multi-Step Processes", Technical Disclosure Commons, (February 19, 2026)
https://www.tdcommons.org/dpubs_series/9349