Scope Creep Clauses in AI Contracts

By the third month the agent was drafting notings, answering the CM dashboard cell, summarising legislative questions, and — unofficially — classifying RTI applications because someone in the cell had pasted a prompt. None of that was in the three workflow cards. None of it had a gate design. All of it was the AI project in the weekly review. The SI smiled and sent a change request only when they needed another GPU.

Scope creep in agent contracts is not only extra screens. It is extra corpora, extra tools, extra sites, extra languages, extra personal-data classes, and extra hours of silent prompt engineering that never appear as a variation. GFR still expects you not to expand a contract into a new procurement by shrugs. CVC writing has always been unkind to post-award redesign that should have been competed.

This guide is for commercial officers and programme owners. It is not a substitute for your variation rules. It is the agent-specific places those rules must name, or the shrugs will win.

Name the units of change before award

If the contract cannot say what a unit of extra work is, every request becomes a negotiation while the secretary waits. Publish a rate card for extra workflow cards, extra read-only corpora, extra write tools, extra sites, extra languages, and extra evaluation sets. Even if you never buy them, the card sets the argument.

Say what is already inside the AMC: defect repair, security patches, model refresh if you bought it, and support hours. Say what is not: a new write-back, a new directorate, a new personal-data class.

Units that commonly sneak in after go-live.

Informal request	What it actually is	Clause treatment
Just add this share drive to the bot	New corpus, maybe personal data	Change with DPO sign-off; rate for indexing and eval
Let it update the MIS directly, we trust it now	New write tool and a new gate	New workflow card; not an AMC tweak
Same thing for the other six districts	New sites, identity, maybe network path	Site schedule; hardware and support bands
Also do Tamil	New evaluation, maybe new model class	Language as a priced option
Keep improving the prompts	Standing professional services	Capped hours or a separate retainer
Use last year's scholarship file to test	New processing of personal data	Forbidden without a lawful basis and a variation

Who may ask, and who may not

Name the departmental officer who can issue a written change. A WhatsApp from a PS is not a variation. If leadership wants speed, give that officer a short form, not a verbal pipeline.

Require CISO and DPO initials when the change adds a tool, a destination, or a personal-data class. Scope creep is how isolation dies — one temporary connector at a time.

Cap the cumulative value or percentage that can be added without a fresh competition, in line with your manual. Agents make it emotionally easy to exceed that cap because each increment looks small.

Anti-shrug sentences that belong in the bid

Only workflow cards listed in schedule F are in scope. Additional cards require a written order against the published rate card. Prompt engineering beyond the included hours is a professional-services line, not goodwill. New corpora are not accepted on informal media. They follow the same classification and, if personal, the same processing schedule.

The vendor shall not enable a write tool in production without a gated card, even if an officer asks in a demo. A new site is not a copy-paste. It is a line with identity, logging and, if claimed, isolation proof.

When creep is really a new tender

If the agent was bought to draft notings and is now being asked to decide benefits, you have a new object. If a single-directorate pilot is becoming a statewide system of record, you have a new object. If a no-personal-data tool is being pointed at Aadhaar-seeded lists, you have a new object and a DPDP event.

Write the tripwires in the contract so the programme owner is not left alone against a charismatic review meeting. Tripwires are kindness to the officer who has to say no.

Objections you will hear — and what to do with them

These are the lines that stall the file. Answer them in the room, then put the answer in the note. A spoken answer without paper will be forgotten by the next officer.

Tight scope will make us look anti-innovation.

A rate card is how innovation gets paid without pretending it was free. Informal innovation on personal data is not a virtue.

The SI will pad the rate card.

Then compete the card, or benchmark it in the bid. An unpriced future is padded more, only later, when you cannot walk.

Leadership will still WhatsApp new work.

Give them a one-page form and a named officer. Minute the WhatsApp into that form or it did not happen. Your variation rules already want paper. Use them.

We should allow unlimited prompt tuning under AMC.

Unlimited hours are unlimited money. Cap them. Extra hours are visible scope.

Lock the units before the award letter

1. List year-one cards and explicitly list known year-two desires as options, not as hopes.
2. Publish unit rates and a cumulative variation cap consistent with your manual.
3. Name the change authority and the CISO/DPO tripwires.
4. Brief leadership that informal new workflows are out of scope until the form exists.

How this shows up in the file

Subject: Scope-control schedule for the agent contract.

Schedule F lists in-scope workflow cards. Additional cards, corpora, write tools, sites and languages will be ordered only in writing against the published rate card, with CISO/DPO initials where tools, destinations or personal data change. Cumulative variation will not exceed the cap in the special conditions without a fresh procurement decision. Informal demonstrations shall not enable production write tools.

This note is not legal advice.

What the variation log must show a later PAC

A PAC or a successor officer will not reconstruct WhatsApp history. They will open a single register. Date of request. Who asked. Which workflow card, corpus, tool, site or language. Whether CISO and DPO initialled. Whether the unit sat on the published rate card. Running total against the cap. Whether the work started before the written order. If any of those cells is blank, the informal month has already begun.

Keep the register opposite the contract, not in the SI's project tool. When leadership asks why a new district is not live by Friday, the register is how you show that Friday was never a unit you bought. Without it, every delay looks like vendor failure and every extra API looks like included support.

If the running total approaches the cap, write the next note before the cap is crossed: compete a new lot, or record why a permitted variation still describes the same object. Crossing the cap in silence is how an agent AMC becomes a second programme the original bid never saw.

This article is a field guide for Indian public buyers, not legal, procurement, financial or audit advice. Confirm every citation against the live GFR compilation on doe.gov.in, the relevant DoE procurement manual, GeM terms, CVC guidance and your own counsel before a sentence enters a tender file.

How to put this in the RFP, not the preamble

A P2 Procurement who searches “scope creep government contract” is usually drafting or scoring a bid. “Scope Creep Clauses in AI Contracts” belongs in eligibility, the evaluation matrix, or a numbered annexure. If it only lives in the covering note, L1 will ignore it.

Agents invite informal new workflows. If the contract treats every new corpus and write-back as part of AI, you will fund a second project without a second bid. QCBS weights are a choice you must publish before opening. Accuracy is a task plus a dataset, not a slogan. SLAs for agents must name tool-calls, human gates and log export — uptime alone is a hosting metric.

Do not let a vendor write the specification and then bid on it. Record unsolicited proposals. Pay for pilots that touch personal data. Write exit before you write go-live.

1. Move the control from the preamble into a scored or eligibility row.
2. Attach a one-page definition (accuracy, SLA, language, data handling).
3. Require an artefact in the technical bid, not a slide.
4. Extend the bid date if a corrigendum is material.
5. Minute the demo on your data, offline if you claimed air-gap.

Close this loop before the next CAB

Put “Scope Creep Clauses in AI Contracts” on the next change-advisory or bid-opening agenda as a single line item with an owner. If it cannot earn a line item, it will not earn a control. The owner should be a P2 Procurement, not “the vendor.”

Revisit the item when the model, the GeM term, the region, or the SI changes. “scope creep government contract” is not a one-time workshop. It is a watch item. Date the last check. Unsigned watch items are souvenirs.