…About public agency sustainability reporting and role of the Centre for Public Agency Sustainability Reporting (CPASR) and the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)
Sustainability reporting is a process for publicly disclosing an organisation’s economic, environmental, and social performance. Many public agencies find that financial reporting alone no longer satisfies the needs of constituents, customers, communities, and other stakeholders for information about overall organisational performance.
Through sustainability reporting, organisations report on progress against performance goals not only for economic achievements, but for environmental protection and social well-being. Reporting also helps drive sustainable governance, in which organisations include issues such as globalisation, income disparity, and ecological vitality in top-level decision-making.
We predict the need for clearer definitions to evolve alongside the simultaneous evolution of sustainability reporting practices by public agencies.
There are multiple benefits to both report preparers and report readers.
For reporting organisations, the GRI Sustainability Reporting Guidelines and the Sector Supplement for Public Agencies provide a tool for: management, increased comparability and reduced costs of sustainability, brand and reputation enhancement, differentiation from other public agencies, networking and communications. For report readers, the GRI Sustainability Reporting Guidelines Sector Supplement for Public Agencies are a useful benchmarking tool, corporate governance tool and an avenue for long-term dialogue with reporting organisations.
The processes of stakeholder engagement, data management, transparency and performance disclosure can help public agencies and their stakeholders identify trends and targets, embed change in management systems and, ultimately, work towards sustainability outcomes.
For financial reporting, public agencies follow a generally accepted reporting framework. Without a similar framework, sustainability reports lack the features that could make them broadly useful: credibility, consistency, and comparability.
Already, many public agencies across all sectors have voluntarily published environmental, social, or sustainability reports. These, however, are not comparable and may fail to address the full spectrum of stakeholder interests. A generally accepted framework can simplify report preparation and assessment, helping both reporters and report users gain greater value from sustainability reporting.
As the development costs of the Guidelines and other GRI / CPASR documents is shared among multiple users, the overall transaction cost for reporters is considerably lower than the costs that might be involved in developing an ‘own company’ or ‘own sector’ reporting framework.
A Multi-Stakeholder Process
The GRI Sustainability Reporting Guidelines and Sector Supplement for Public Agencies are the result of a transparent, consensus-driven global consultation process, involving hundreds of stakeholders from around the world, and built on a foundation of support by leading corporations, non-governmental organisations, labour groups, governments, and others.
A Record of Accomplishment
The Centre for Public Agency Sustainability Reporting formed in 2005, and has developed with close collaboration from the Global Reporting Initiative.
Since founding in 1997, GRI has made rapid progress on a common global framework for sustainability reporting. GRI released draft Sustainability Reporting Guidelines in 1999, revised Guidelines in 2000, and again in 2002. In October 2006, the newly revised G3 guidelines were released.
Each version has incorporated extensive global input from reporters, report users, and technical experts. Since 1997, GRI has been on the agenda at more than 500 seminars, workshops, and conferences worldwide, gathering ideas and input and encouraging involvement from more than 10,000 stakeholders. The EU, OECD, UN, World Economic Forum, and several governments have referenced the GRI Guidelines in communications to their constituents.
Independence
GRI / CPASR maintains independence from reporting organisations and report users through its funding approach and governance structure. A mix of governments, companies, foundations, and multi-lateral organisations fund GRI and its processes to ensure that no single stakeholder group dominates. All of GRI governance bodies—the Board of Directors, Stakeholder Council, Technical Advisory Committee and Organisational Stakeholders—are structured to reflect the geographic and stakeholder constituency diversity that have always been the foundation of GRI’s legitimacy.
The GRI Guidelines are not a code of conduct or principles. The GRI, however, can be used to support such codes and principles. If a company adheres to the UN Global Compact, for example, the company can report its social and economic performance using the Guidelines to demonstrate conformance with the Global Compact principles. The Guidelines do not specify performance levels and should not be construed as a performance standard.
To date, 950 organisations in the auto, utility, consumer products, pharmaceuticals, financial, telecommunications, transport, energy and chemicals sectors, among others, in addition to public authorities and non-profits, have published reports that adopt part or all of the Guidelines. A list of reporters known to be using the GRI, including public agencies, can be found on the GRI website.
Many public agencies have reported on the benefits of sustainability reporting to their overall operations. For example the Australian Government Department of the Environment and Heritage (DEH) described its sustainability report was ‘part of our commitment to continuously improve the sustainability of our operations. It is also consistent with our position of encouraging other organisations to report.’
Organisations of all sizes and types operating in any location should use the Guidelines. The core Guidelines are not specific to any single industry sector. The Guidelines were developed primarily with the needs of business organisations in mind, but other types of organisations such as government agencies and not-for-profit organisations can also use the Guidelines. The question is not whether an organisation can cover all aspects of the Guidelines in its first report. The real question is whether an organisation is serious about systematic disclosure of its non-financial information in a form that meets stakeholder expectations for rigour, consistency, and timeliness. This seriousness can be demonstrated in only one way: launching a reporting process.
The CPASR seeks to elevate the quality and expand the quantity of reports. It believes that verification is one approach to achieving credible sustainability reports. At this time, CPASR itself does not assess the conformity of reports against the Guidelines nor evaluate their accuracy. Nor does CPASR currently certify or recommend verification services among the many accounting, auditing, management consultancy, and NGOs that offer these services.
CPASR does provide subscribers from the public sector an assessment of their current sustainability reporting practice and advice on improvement. Recognising that sustainability report verification is at an early stage, CPASR will continue to track trends in verification, facilitate ongoing dialogue on the subject, and review its role in this emerging field.
*These FAQ’s are based on an existing GRI FAQ document that can be found at: www.globalreporting.org
|
Opentracker: Web Site Analytics