---
published: true
layout: post
title: Ontological vs Epistemological API Governance
date: 2025-05-30T09:00:00.000Z
tags:
  - Governance
  - Teams
  - IDE
  - Artificial Intelligence
  - AI
  - Guidance
image: https://kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com/algorotoscope-master/america-under-socialism-under-the-west-side-highway.jpeg
---
I see two distinct types of API governance unfolding within enterprises who view their operational culture and their workforce having different levels of understanding and respect for leadership. I get asked to come in and provide advice, guidance, and even enforcement of API governance, and once you begin to ask a few questions about their current understanding of what API governance is and what business or engineering would like to accomplish with API governance--you can usually put enterprises into two very different approaches to governing the API sprawl that has emerged across your average enterprise in 2025.

- **Ontological** - Showing the relations between the concepts and categories in a subject area or domain, and establishing and enforcing a common set of rules and tags.
- **Epistemological** - Relating to the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope, and the distinction between justified belief and opinion.

An ontological approach is the most common. Architects, as well as business and engineering leadership often just wants the set of rules and tags to organize and enforce API governance and then they are done. Where the enterprises who are taking a more epistemological approach are able to work across teams to define rules and tags to organize and enforce things, but they realize there is never a done state and API governance is something that will need to always be negotiated over time. Whether your API governance is ontological or epistemological will depend on the culture of your enterprise and how you see labor and education practices, as well as how you empower agency and expect accountability across your teams who are producing APIs.