Advisory & Retainer

After The Binder Is Built, The Program Needs To Be Run

ModalPoint’s productized engagements — the Governance Readiness Assessment, “Texas Ready,” and the full “Cross-Border Governance Binder” — produce a complete governance binder in four to twelve weeks. For many organizations, that delivery is the end of our involvement: their internal team owns the binder and runs it from there.

For others, the binder is the beginning. New AI deployments appear. Regulatory guidance evolves. A new vendor integration raises a Section 53 question. An enforcement action elsewhere in the industry changes the threat model. The binder needs to be maintained by someone who speaks DIG, the NIST AI Risk Management Framework, and the four-framework cross-mapping fluently — and most organizations do not yet have that person on staff.

This page is for those organizations.

---

Retainer Advisory

For clients who have completed a ModalPoint sprint engagement (or an equivalent internal buildout), we offer monthly retainer advisory — a recurring engagement that keeps your governance program current as the regulatory, technical, and operational landscape changes.

What retainer advisory covers:

• Binder maintenance review. Quarterly structured reviews of the governance binder to identify out-of-date artifacts, newly required documentation, and drift between the binder’s state and your actual AI system inventory.
• New-deployment governance. Every time your organization deploys a new AI system, embeds a new vendor tool, or changes an existing decision workflow, we work with the operational owner to produce the incremental governance artifacts before the system goes live. This is how shadow-IT LLM usage stops being an audit risk.
• Regulatory monitoring. We monitor TRAIGA AG guidance, EU AI Act Commission clarifications, NIST AI RMF profile updates, ISO 42001 evolution, and relevant federal civil rights enforcement activity. When something changes in a way that affects your binder, you hear about it from us — not from a compliance newsletter six months later.
• Incident response support. If a regulator, auditor, plaintiff, or internal stakeholder raises an AI governance question, we are the first call. We walk through the binder with you, identify the relevant artifacts, and draft the response alongside your legal and compliance teams.
• Executive briefings. Quarterly 60-minute briefings with your executive team or board covering the current regulatory landscape, the state of your binder, and any strategic decisions coming in the next 90 days.

Retainer advisory is priced monthly with a minimum commitment. It is designed for organizations where AI governance is now a continuous operational concern, not a one-time project.

---

Fractional Chief AI Officer

For organizations that need more than periodic advisory but do not yet have the budget or scope for a full-time Chief AI Officer, we offer a fractional CAIO engagement — an embedded, accountable, executive-level advisory presence led by Matthew Bertram.

What the fractional CAIO engagement covers:

• Named executive presence — Matt attends relevant executive meetings, board risk discussions, and cross-functional AI governance steering committees as an accountable advisory voice
• Cross-functional coordination — working directly with legal, risk, compliance, IT, and operational leadership to ensure AI governance decisions are made with full context
• Vendor due diligence oversight — review of new AI vendor integrations before contract signing, including GPAI Article 53 flow-down obligations where applicable
• Internal capability development — structured coaching of the internal owner of your governance binder, so that over the course of the engagement, your organization grows the internal capacity to run the program without external dependency
• Regulatory engagement support — if your organization is in direct engagement with a regulator (Texas AG, CFPB, HHS OCR, EEOC, or an EU notified body), we work alongside your counsel on the operational governance side of the response
• Everything in the retainer advisory engagement

Fractional CAIO engagements are typically structured as a 12-month commitment with quarterly reviews and an off-ramp pathway as your internal team’s capability matures. Matt already serves in a fractional executive capacity for the Oil and Gas Global Network and brings the same accountable, embedded model to ModalPoint clients.

---

Executive Briefings

For boards, leadership teams, and investor groups that need a structured view of the AI governance landscape without a full engagement, we offer private executive briefings — 90-minute working sessions covering the four-framework landscape, the organization’s current exposure profile, and the strategic decisions the audience should be prepared to make in the next six months.

Executive briefings are often requested as a prelude to a larger engagement — a way for the executive team or board to calibrate their understanding of the 2026 AI regulatory wave before committing to a sprint engagement. They can also be standalone: a single session, a documented summary, and a list of recommended next actions.

---

How To Engage

All three models — retainer advisory, fractional CAIO, and executive briefings — begin with the same conversation. Start the conversation here, tell us about your organization and your current governance state, and we will recommend the engagement model that best fits your situation. If none of the three is right, we will say so and point you toward whatever is.

→ Start a Conversation

---

ModalPoint is a Houston, Texas-based AI governance advisory and a division of EWR Digital. Founded and led by Matthew Bertram, President of ModalPoint and CEO of EWR Digital. Digital Information Governance® is a trademark of Matthew Bertram.