Training › Module 04

Module 04 — The Final Approver

Managers and delegated decision-makers with the authority to authorise release · 30–40 minutes · Prerequisites: Module 00 — Foundation and Module 02 — The Reviewer (Module 03 recommended, as your review of documents builds on the senior-tier checks)

In a hurry? Jump to the quick-reference card or the knowledge check — or print the all-roles reference.

Learning objectives

By the end of this module you can:

1. Describe your org-wide scope and where your work appears (“Approvals”).
2. Give per-document final approval (“Final Approval” → “Confirm Approval”) and explain the freeze it causes.
3. Use “Sign Off Selected” safely, understanding that it freezes every selected document at once.
4. Complete the case-level attestation on “Finalise & Close”: choose the “Disclosure outcome” and press “Attest case complete”.
5. State your export-package rights and apply the fail-closed release discipline: verify before release, never bypass a blocked export.

1. Scope and navigation

The Final Approver is organisation-wide — you see every case, across every department, so you can approve across teams. This is fixed for the role and cannot be narrowed.

In the navigation rail, a Final Approver’s rail item reads “Approvals” instead of “My Queue” — a label change only: it opens the same queue page (still headed “My Queue”) listing documents in active review across every department. The documents actually awaiting your final sign-off appear on “Home”, under “Approval queue — by deadline risk”.

Everything from the reviewer tier still applies: you can review, decide detections, assign grounds, and (like the senior tier) send work back with “Request Changes” → “Send Back”. What is unique to your tier — shared only with the Lead — is the final sign-off itself, the case attestation, and the “Ombudsman Package”.

2. Per-document final approval — and the freeze

Reference: sign-off in the feature reference

Open a document in “Reviewed (Initial)” (until then the toolbar reads “Signed Off — Awaiting Final Approval”), satisfy yourself the decisions and grounds are right, then:

1. Press “Final Approval”
2. Confirm with “Confirm Approval”
3. The document becomes “Signed Off” and is frozen.

Before approving, check for anything that would embarrass the release later: a red “{N} unlocatable” badge, redacted detections without grounds, or [REVIEW REQUIRED] types decided in bulk rather than by hand. Approving is the last human gate before the redactions are burned in.

3. Bulk sign-off — “Sign Off Selected”

On the case’s Documents tab, tick documents (or “Select all documents”) to reveal the bulk-action bar. “Sign Off Selected” gives final sign-off to several reviewed documents together (Final Approver / Lead).

4. Case attestation on Finalise & Close

Per-document approval is not the end. At the case level, on the “Finalise & Close” screen, the assigned approver completes the “Final sign-off” panel:

1. Choose the “Disclosure outcome” — “Granted in full”, “Granted in part”, or “Refused”.
2. Press “Attest case complete”

The attestation is the formal statement that the disclosure decision is made and the case is complete. It matters mechanically too: generating an external package (Requester or Ombudsman) requires the case to be fully attested (and the agency name to be set) — without it, the export is blocked with an explanatory message.

After attestation, the Lead handles the terminal steps: “Mark as released” under “Release for disclosure” (which freezes the case and all its documents and stamps the disclosure date), then “Close & archive”.

5. Your export-package rights

The Final Approver can produce all three packages:

• “Requester Package” — the only package screened for external release.
• “Internal Package” — adds the audit trail, chain of custody, and verification report.
• “Ombudsman Package” — the full disclosure file, including the unredacted originals. Only the Final Approver and the Lead can produce it.

6. Responsibility framing — verify before release

Reference: export & verification · FAQ: an export is blocked

Your sign-off carries the release. Three disciplines:

Verify before release. During export you will see “Verifying redactions are permanent...”. Check “Document Readiness” first — only “Signed off — ready to export” documents export cleanly; readiness badges also flag “Not Signed Off”, “Missing Grounds”, and “Review Incomplete”. When the package generates, a SHA-256 integrity hash is shown and it appears in “Export History”.

The system fails closed — respect it.

• A blocked external export shows the “Export Failed” card with the reason; nothing is assembled or downloadable. Fix the flagged documents and regenerate. (An “unlocatable” detection is reported but does not itself block the export — the blockers are a found leak, an unavailable verifier, or a redaction exception.)
• Internal packages still generate, but each document’s true status is shown honestly — never relabelled “passed”. On screen the per-document list shows “PASSED”, “LEAK-FOUND”, “UNVERIFIED”, or “EXCEPTION” (the document failed to redact and is not included), plus “WITHHELD IN FULL” for a deliberately excluded whole-document withholding (not a failure).

Never bypass a block. Do not override or work around a blocked export to force a release, and do not “release” by any route other than a verified “Requester Package”. Redaction at export is permanent — the withheld text is destroyed, not hidden — but that guarantee only holds for a package that passed verification. If a document cannot be verified clean, the answer is to fix it, not to ship it.

Hands-on exercise

On the demo instance, using a case whose documents are in “Reviewed (Initial)”:

1. On “Home”, find “Approval queue — by deadline risk” and confirm it lists work awaiting your sign-off across departments (org-wide scope). Note that the rail’s “Approvals” item opens the shared queue page of documents in active review.
2. Open one document, audit its decisions, then press “Final Approval” → “Confirm Approval”. Confirm the badge reads “Signed Off” and try to change a detection — observe that detections are locked.
3. On the Documents tab, select the two remaining reviewed documents and use “Sign Off Selected”, having checked each first.
4. On “Finalise & Close”, review “Document Readiness”, then complete the “Final sign-off” panel: choose “Granted in part” as the “Disclosure outcome” and press “Attest case complete”.
5. Select the documents, choose “Requester Package”, and press “Generate Export Package”. Watch “Verifying redactions are permanent...”, then “Download Package” and note the SHA-256 in “Export History”.
6. Ask your trainer to load the prepared “leaky” case; attempt an external export and observe the “Export Failed” card. Identify the flagged document and explain — without doing it — what would be needed before this case could release.
7. Generate an “Ombudsman Package” on the clean case and state, to your trainer, who is allowed to receive it.

Quick-reference card