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Foundation models are increasingly embedded in information access, content production, analysis, communication, and decision-support processes. Their broad capabilities have intensified interest in alignment, yet alignment alone cannot establish responsible use. A model may appear responsive to instructions or preferences while remaining opaque, weakly grounded, unreliable under changing conditions, overconfident, difficult to contest, or insufficiently governed. This article proposes a conceptual governance and technical safeguard framework for responsible foundation models. The framework treats foundation models as components of decision infrastructure situated within socio-technical and institutional environments rather than as isolated predictive tools. It integrates eight interdependent areas: model and alignment safeguards; explainability and interpretability; knowledge grounding and provenance; reliability, uncertainty, and hallucination containment; human control and escalation; institutional accountability; auditability and documentation; and lifecycle monitoring and governance updating. Explainability requirements are differentiated from interpretability, transparency, explanation usefulness, and human understanding, while knowledge grounding is separated from factuality, truthfulness, source quality, and provenance. Reliability is addressed through calibration, robustness assessment, boundary testing, uncertainty communication, failure containment, and continuing monitoring. Human oversight is defined through authority, competence, review capacity, escalation pathways, contestability, and recourse rather than nominal human presence. Institutional responsibility is connected to role allocation, evidence trails, documentation, review authority, and consequences. The principal contribution is an integrated framework that clarifies how technical and governance safeguards may support responsible foundation-model assessment without treating alignment, explanation, grounding, testing, oversight, or auditing as independently sufficient. The framework requires empirical validation, domain-specific evaluation, human-centred assessment, institutional governance, and residual-risk management before it can inform consequential operational decisions.