Institute
About DICRI
The Digital Infrastructure Certification and Records Institute (DICRI) is an independent certification institute focused on increasing confidence in deployed infrastructure through evidence-based assurance and certification.
DICRI establishes independent frameworks for infrastructure certification, professional competency and engineering assurance. Its work concerns the evidentiary relationship between what infrastructure was required to be and what governed evidence demonstrates exists in the field.
Why DICRI Exists
Infrastructure outlives the people who plan, design, build and maintain it. Over its service life, organizations change, personnel leave, engineering standards evolve and information systems are replaced, while later engineering decisions continue to depend on records created long before.
A record's appearance or completeness does not establish whether the condition it describes can be relied upon. Reliance depends on whether its evidence remains attributable to its origin, whether its engineering meaning remains intact, and whether its basis can still be examined by an authorized relying party independently of those who produced it.
Where those relationships are lost, the uncertainty is inherited with the infrastructure, and later work must reconstruct what could have been established when the evidence was produced.
“Trust is not assumed. Trust is engineered through evidence, preserved through governance, and demonstrated through verification.”
Because infrastructure passes between many participants, those relationships depend on requirements that hold across organizations and through time, and on governance that applies them consistently. DICRI exists to establish and govern the assurance requirements through which engineering evidence can support certification and professional reliance across transitions of responsibility.
DICRI's Institutional Role
DICRI's work is organized in four institutional functions. Infrastructure Certification concerns the condition of infrastructure, Professional Certification the competency of the people who perform governed work, and Equipment Assurance the instruments through which evidence is produced. Assurance sets out the conditions under which evidence produced across all three can support reliance.
Infrastructure Certification
Certification
DICRI certifies demonstrated conformance between the applicable Engineering Basis and the observed physical condition of infrastructure, establishing a Governed Engineering State through Birth and Health Certificates.
Professional Certification
Certification
DICRI maintains a progressive professional competency framework. Each credential establishes demonstrated competency within a defined scope, supporting the roles required in governed assurance activity.
Equipment Assurance
Assurance
Equipment Assurance establishes whether an instrument satisfies the conditions required for the evidence it produces: its governed identity, applicable assurance status and eligibility for governed use. It is assurance, not equipment certification.
Assurance
Assurance
The DICRI Assurance Framework governs the evidence and assurance conditions that support Engineering Confidence. It sets out the conditions for reliance on which DICRI's certification and assurance functions depend.
DICRI's requirements are independent of the technology used to meet them. Governed evidence may be produced through any authorized evidence pathway that satisfies the applicable evidentiary and assurance requirements; no tool or platform establishes evidentiary validity by itself.
The Engineering Basis and DICRI Assurance
The relationship between what infrastructure was required to be and what governed evidence demonstrates exists in the field involves two distinct sets of requirements, each with its own source of authority.
What the infrastructure is required to satisfy
The Engineering Basis
The applicable authorized requirements governing the condition being evaluated. They may draw on approved designs, specifications, tolerances, codes, regulatory requirements, approved variances and manufacturer requirements, and their applicability and precedence are established by the engineering, regulatory, contractual or other competent authority governing the work.
Questions about the adequacy of that basis remain with the authority responsible for establishing it.
What must be demonstrated for DICRI certification or assurance
DICRI assurance requirements
The requirements DICRI establishes for its own assurance, evidence, certification and professional framework: the conditions under which governed evidence is produced, evaluated against the applicable Engineering Basis and preserved, so that the resulting engineering position can support DICRI certification or assurance.
They govern how evidence can support an Engineering Determination against the Engineering Basis. They do not replace the codes, regulatory requirements, approved designs or specifications from which that basis is drawn.
Where they meet
Governed Engineering Evidence establishes the condition that exists in the field. Its evaluation against the Engineering Basis, under DICRI's assurance requirements, establishes what that condition can support.
Inspection and observation may contribute evidence within this relationship. DICRI's institutional function concerns the governed evidentiary and certification framework surrounding that evidence: how it is produced, evaluated, determined and preserved. Infrastructure Certification sets out how a certification rests on both sets of requirements.
The DICRI Body of Knowledge
The DICRI Body of Knowledge (DBoK) sets out the doctrine and professional reasoning behind DICRI's approach to governed infrastructure evidence, certification and assurance.
The DICRI Assurance Framework and the professional credential framework are defined in it, and the requirements DICRI establishes for its own assurance, evidence, certification and professional framework draw on its doctrine.
The DBoK addresses how governed evidence, evaluation and assurance relate to an applicable Engineering Basis. The requirements governing a particular infrastructure condition continue to come from the authorized sources that apply to it.
Its principles are intended to apply across infrastructure sectors wherever engineering decisions depend on trustworthy information, and are stated independently of the tools, platforms and information systems through which that information is produced or used.