Smart Data Portfolios: A Quantitative Framework for Input Governance in AI

Growing concerns about fairness, privacy, robustness, and transparency have made it a central expectation of AI governance that automated decisions be explainable by institutions and intelligible to affected parties. We introduce the Smart Data Portfolio (SDP) framework, which treats data categories as productive but risk-bearing assets, formalizing input governance as an information-risk trade-off. Within this framework, we define two portfolio-level quantities, Informational Return and Governance-Adjusted Risk, whose interaction characterizes data mixtures and generates a Governance-Efficient Frontier. Regulators shape this frontier through risk caps, admissible categories, and weight bands that translate fairness, privacy, robustness, and provenance requirements into measurable constraints on data allocation while preserving model flexibility. A telecommunications illustration shows how different AI services require distinct portfolios within a common governance structure. The framework offers a familiar portfolio logic as an input-level explanation layer suited to the large-scale deployment of AI systems.