Bio

About Dr. Anthony J. Rhem, PhD.

Bio

by Oct 29, 2018

Dr. Anthony J. Rhem is an information systems professional with over thirty (30) years of experience in the field.

Since 1990, Dr. Rhem has served as the President/Principal Consultant of A.J. Rhem & Associates, a Knowledge Management, Artificial Intelligence and Systems Integration Consulting, Training and Research firm located in Chicago, Illinois. As a consultant, strategist, and advisor, Dr. Rhem has worked with U.S. Fortune 500 corporations in retail, communications, financial, insurance, legal, logistics, education, healthcare, U.S. Government and the U.S. Military.

With over 30 years of experience in the technology field, Dr. Rhem uses his expertise as both a consultant and an educator in the areas of:

    • Knowledge Management
    • Artificial Intelligence
    • Big Data
    • Software Engineering Methods
    • Software Architectures

Dr. Rhem is an accomplished author, speaker, and instructor in the fields of technology and management. He has had the pleasure of speaking at conferences in the US, Europe, Australia, Korea, and Iran.

During his career, Dr. Rhem has trained (and continues to train) hundreds of personnel across many organizations in the principles, practice, and application of:
    • Enterprise Content Management
    • Software Engineering Methodologies
    • Artificial Intelligence
    • Knowledge Management
    • Information Architecture

Dr. Anthony Rhem at 2017 IBA conference in Sydney

Dr. Rhem holds corporate advisory positions as a member of the following Boards of Directors
  • Member – Editorial Board of the AI & Ethics Journal (2020 – present)
  • Chair – International Bar Association Law Firm Management Committee KM & IT Working Group (2018-Present)
  • Member – ASCII Group Inc., Bethesda Maryland (2016 – Present)
  • Chairman –  Board of Trustees, Knowledge Systems Institute, Skokie, Illinois: (2016 – 2018)
  • Member – Industry Advisory Board, International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering (SEKE), July 2007–Present
  • Member – Technology Council of Advisors, Gerson Lehrman Group (2006–Present)
  • Member – Review Panel, National Science Foundation  (2004 – Present)
  • Member – Advisory Board, American University Master of Science Degree Program (2002–Present)

Artificial intelligence creates value only when organizations can trust how it is selected, designed, developed, deployed, used, and monitored. AJRA helps organizations move beyond high-level ethical statements and isolated policies to establish an operating model for AI governance—one that supports innovation while protecting people, the enterprise, and the communities the organization serves.

Our approach integrates AI strategy, risk management, ethics, data and knowledge governance, technology architecture, regulatory readiness, organizational change, and independent assurance. Governance is embedded across the AI lifecycle rather than added after a system is already in production.

What Makes the AJRA Approach Different

Enterprise-focused

We connect AI governance to business strategy, operating priorities, risk tolerance, and measurable value—not technology alone.

Knowledge-grounded

We address the quality, ownership, provenance, context, and flow of the organizational knowledge used by AI systems, including generative and agentic AI.

Lifecycle-based

Governance begins with ideation and intake and continues through design, testing, deployment, monitoring, change, retirement, and incident response.

Risk-proportionate

Oversight and controls are scaled to the potential impact of each AI use case, system, model, agent, vendor, and decision pathway.

Evidence-driven

We define the documentation, metrics, testing results, approvals, logs, and monitoring evidence leaders should expect before trusting an AI system.

Human-centered

Accountability remains with people. Human oversight, contestability, accessibility, fairness, privacy, transparency, and safety are designed into governance decisions.

Standards-aligned

The governance model can be mapped to recognized frameworks and obligations, including the NIST AI RMF, ISO/IEC 42001, IEEE CertifAIEd™, and applicable laws and sector requirements.

AJRA's Governance Philosophy

AI governance should not become policy theater or an innovation bottleneck. It should create the decision rights, evidence, controls, and accountability needed to use AI responsibly and at scale.

The AJRA AI Governance Lifecycle

AJRA applies a structured, six-stage lifecycle that translates governance principles into repeatable management practices and operational controls.

01

Discover and Establish the Baseline

Identify AI use cases, models, algorithms, generative AI tools, agents, data sources, vendors, business owners, users, and decision impacts. Assess AI readiness and maturity, surface shadow AI, document dependencies, and establish a fact-based view of current capabilities and risks.

02

Define Governance and Accountability

Establish the governance charter, decision rights, roles, committees, escalation pathways, risk ownership, acceptable-use boundaries, and executive and board reporting. Align AI governance with enterprise risk, cybersecurity, privacy, legal, compliance, procurement, data governance, model risk management, and knowledge management.

03

Classify Risk and Assess Impact

Apply a risk-tiering method based on purpose, autonomy, affected stakeholders, decision criticality, data sensitivity, legal exposure, model complexity, and potential harm. Conduct AI impact, ethics, privacy, security, bias, transparency, and vendor assessments proportionate to the risk level.

04

Design and Implement Controls

Embed policies, standards, review gates, testing requirements, human oversight, data and knowledge controls, documentation, traceability, access controls, prompt and agent safeguards, approval criteria, procurement requirements, and incident procedures within the AI lifecycle and existing workflows.

05

Validate, Approve, and Assure

Determine whether governance is working through evidence—not policy existence. Review model and system documentation, evaluation results, risk treatment, accountability, monitoring plans, and residual risk before deployment. Where appropriate, conduct independent or IEEE-aligned third-party assessments.

06

Monitor, Improve, and Report

Track performance, drift, bias, hallucination, misuse, security, privacy, incidents, human overrides, vendor changes, regulatory developments, and realized value. Provide leadership with meaningful indicators and continuously improve the AI governance management system.

Governance Across the Enterprise

Effective governance requires more than model controls; it requires coordinated management across eight interconnected domains.

Strategy and Value

Business alignment, use-case prioritization, risk appetite, value realization, and responsible innovation.

Representative outputs

AI strategy, roadmap, use-case portfolio, value and risk criteria.

Leadership and Accountability

Board and executive oversight, decision rights, ownership, escalation, and organizational accountability.

Representative outputs

Governance charter, RACI, committee model, reporting structure.

Policy and Compliance

Enterprise policies, regulatory mapping, standards alignment, and audit readiness.

Representative outputs

AI policy suite, compliance matrix, control library, evidence requirements.

Data, Information, and Knowledge

Data quality, provenance, privacy, metadata, knowledge sources, content authority, and retrieval grounding.

Representative outputs

Data and knowledge controls, source requirements, lineage and provenance rules.

Model, System, and Agent Risk

Validation, robustness, bias, transparency, autonomy, human oversight, security, and lifecycle management.

Representative outputs

Risk tiering, impact assessment, model and system cards, testing and approval gates.

Third-Party and Procurement

Vendor due diligence, contractual protections, transparency, performance, monitoring, and exit planning.

Representative outputs

Vendor assessment, procurement standards, contract control requirements.

People and Change

AI literacy, role redesign, competence, responsible use, adoption, and culture.

Representative outputs

Training, communications, role-based guidance, change and adoption plan.

Monitoring and Assurance

Metrics, incidents, drift, control effectiveness, audits, and continual improvement.

Representative outputs

Dashboards, KRIs and KPIs, audit plan, monitoring and improvement backlog.

How AJRA Helps

Engagements are tailored to the organization's maturity, regulatory environment, technology portfolio, and business objectives. Services may be delivered independently or combined into an integrated AI governance program.

AI Readiness and Maturity Assessment

Evaluate governance, leadership, workforce, process, data, knowledge, technology, risk, and operational capabilities; identify gaps and prioritize an actionable roadmap.

Responsible AI Strategy and Operating Model

Define how the organization will pursue AI value responsibly, including governance structure, decision rights, funding, accountability, and integration with enterprise management processes.

AI Policy, Standards, and Procedures

Create practical policy and control requirements covering acceptable use, generative AI, agentic AI, model and system lifecycle, data and knowledge use, human oversight, procurement, monitoring, and incidents.

AI Inventory, Risk Tiering, and Impact Assessment

Establish an authoritative inventory; classify systems and use cases; assess ethical, legal, operational, privacy, security, workforce, and societal impacts.

AI Audit and Independent Assurance

Evaluate whether governance controls are designed appropriately, operating effectively, and supported by defensible evidence. Provide findings, risk ratings, remediation actions, and leadership-ready reporting.

IEEE-Aligned AI Ethics Assessments

Perform third-party assessments aligned with the IEEE CertifAIEd™ framework to examine accountability, transparency, privacy, algorithmic bias, and other ethical criteria applicable to the system.

AI Vendor and Procurement Assessment

Assess vendor claims, model transparency, data practices, security, performance, contractual risk, monitoring, and organizational fit before purchase or renewal.

Governance Training and AI Literacy

Build role-based competence for boards, executives, governance bodies, risk and compliance teams, technology teams, business users, and AI system owners.

Implementation and Operationalization

Translate recommendations into workflows, review gates, templates, dashboards, control evidence, governance routines, and continuous-monitoring practices.

Aligned with Recognized AI Governance Frameworks

AJRA does not force every organization into a single framework. We create an integrated control environment that uses the most relevant standards, laws, and industry practices for the organization's context.

NIST AI Risk Management Framework

Supports a structured approach to GOVERN, MAP, MEASURE, and MANAGE AI risk and trustworthiness across the lifecycle.

ISO/IEC 42001

Provides management-system requirements for establishing, implementing, maintaining, and continually improving an Artificial Intelligence Management System.

IEEE CertifAIEd™

Provides an applied ethics assessment approach addressing accountability, transparency, privacy, algorithmic bias, and related ethical criteria.

EU Artificial Intelligence Act

Informs risk classification, prohibited and high-risk practices, transparency, documentation, human oversight, AI literacy, and other obligations where applicable.

Sector and Enterprise Requirements

Integrates relevant financial services, insurance, healthcare, public-sector, cybersecurity, privacy, procurement, records, and model-risk obligations with existing governance.

What Clients Can Expect

A clear and current inventory of AI systems, use cases, models, agents, vendors, owners, data and knowledge dependencies, and risk classifications.

A governance operating model with accountable roles, decision rights, review forums, escalation paths, and executive and board oversight.

Policies and controls that are usable within real development, procurement, deployment, and business workflows.

Risk and impact assessments that distinguish acceptable experimentation from unmanaged enterprise exposure.

Documented evidence that supports regulatory inquiries, internal audit, customer due diligence, third-party assurance, and leadership decisions.

Metrics that show whether AI is trustworthy, compliant, adopted, controlled, and producing intended business value.

A prioritized improvement roadmap that balances immediate risk reduction with long-term governance maturity.

The Result

An AI governance capability that helps the organization innovate faster, because leaders, employees, customers, regulators, and partners can see how AI decisions are governed and why the organization's controls can be trusted.

Build Governance That Works in Practice

Whether your organization is beginning its AI journey, scaling generative AI, deploying autonomous agents, evaluating third-party solutions, or preparing for regulatory and assurance requirements, AJRA can help you establish governance that is practical, proportionate, and aligned with your mission.

Schedule an AI Governance Consultation