Servergoverned

Servergoverned is a governance model in information technology in which policy creation, decision making, and enforcement are centralized in server-side components. In such systems, servers issue authoritative rules to clients and services, which implement actions accordingly. This approach emphasizes centralized control, auditable behavior, and consistency across distributed components.

Core features include a central policy engine, versioned policy definitions, and a single source of truth for configuration data, with enforcement points across the infrastructure. Policy-as-code artifacts define rules, and decisions are evaluated against current state data in authoritative stores.

Applications include configuration management for large fleets, centralized access control across microservices, data governance and retention in cloud environments, and coordinated workflow orchestration.

Advantages include uniform policy enforcement, easier updates, auditable trails, and improved compliance.

Challenges include potential single points of failure or latency from central decisions, scalability limits in partitioned networks, and security risks if the server is breached. Hybrid approaches may be used for offline or edge environments.

The term is not universally standardized and is used mainly in discussions of centralized governance, policy as code, and policy engines. It often coexists with client-governed or decentralized models.

See also policy as code, centralized governance, RBAC, and Open Policy Agent.