Quality of reported information

From the project record

6 of 16

Part 1: Report Content, Boundary, and Quality

Quality of Reported Information

This section contains principles that guide choices on ensuring the quality of reported information, including its proper presentation. Decisions related to the processes of preparing information in a report should be consistent with these principles.

Principles for Ensuring the Quality of Reported Information

Balance
The report should provide a balanced and reasonable presentation of the reporting organization’s performance.

Explanation:
The overall presentation of the report content and of the information on specific issues should present an unbiased picture of the reporting organization’s performance, avoiding selections, omissions, or presentation formats that are reasonably likely to unduly or inappropriately influence a decision or judgment by the report reader. The report should include both favorable and unfavorable results and should cover significant issues that can influence the decisions of stakeholders in proportion to their materiality. Reports should clearly distinguish between factual presentation and the reporting organization’s interpretation of information.

Tests:

• The report discloses both favorable and unfavorable results and issues.
• The information in the report is presented in a format that allows users to see positive and negative trends in performance.
• The emphasis on different content of the report is proportionate to the relative materiality of the issues or information.

How to use the principles
Each of the reporting principles consists of a definition, an explanation, and a set of tests for the reporting organization to assess their use of the principles. The tests are intended to serve as tools for self-diagnosis, but not as specific items to report against. They can, however, serve as a reference for explaining decisions about the application of the principles.

Comparability
The information reported should remain consistent and be compiled and presented in a manner that enables stakeholders using the report to analyze changes in the organization’s performance over time as well as relative to other organizations.

Explanation:
Comparability is the basis for interpreting performance. Stakeholders using the report should be able to compare information on economic, environmental, and social performance against the organization’s earlier performance and against its objectives as well as against the performance of other organizations. Consistency in data calculations and report layout year-to-year, along with the explanation of methods and assumptions used in preparing information all facilitate comparability. Consistency allows internal and external parties to benchmark performance and assess progress as part of supporting rating activities, investment decisions, advocacy programs, and other activities. An organization should include absolute data as well as normalized data to ensure that users can make appropriate analytical comparisons.

When changes in boundary, scope, length of the reporting period or content occur (including in the design, definitions and use of any indicators in the report), reporting organizations should, whenever practicable, restate current disclosures alongside historical data (or vice versa) to ensure that time series information and cross-organizational comparisons are both reliable and meaningful. Where such restatements are not provided, the reporting organization should explain the reasons and discuss the implications for interpreting current disclosures.

Tests:

• The report and the information contained within it can be compared on a year-to-year basis.
• The organization’s performance can be compared with appropriate benchmarks.
• Any significant variation in basic report content with respect to boundary, scope, length of reporting period, or information covered year-to-year can be identified and explained.
• Where they are available, the reporting organization applies generally accepted protocols for compiling information, including the GRI Technical Protocols for indicators contained in the Guidelines.
• The report uses GRI Sector Supplements, where available.

Accuracy
The reported information should be accurate and sufficiently detailed for stakeholders using the report to make decisions with a high degree of confidence.

Explanation:
Responses to economic, environmental, and social issues and indicators can be expressed in many different ways, ranging from qualitative responses to detailed quantitative measurements. The characteristics that determine accuracy vary according to the nature of the information and the user of the information. For example, the accuracy of qualitative information is largely determined by the degree of clarity, detail, and balance in presentation within the appropriate report boundary. The accuracy of quantitative information, on the other hand, may depend on the specific methods used to gather, compile, and analyze data. The specific threshold of accuracy that is necessary will partly depend on the intended use of the information. Certain decisions will require higher levels of accuracy in reported information than others.

Tests:

• The report indicates what data has been measured.
• The data measurement techniques and bases for calculations are adequately described, and can be replicated with similar results.
• The margin of error for quantitative data is not sufficient to substantially influence conclusions on performance.
• The report indicates what data has been estimated and what assumptions and techniques have been used to produce the estimates.
• The qualitative statements in the report are valid on the basis of other reported information and other available evidence.

Timeliness
The information is presented in time, and on a regular schedule, for stakeholders using the report to be able to make informed decisions.

Explanation:
The usefulness of information is closely tied to its timely availability to stakeholders. Timeliness ensures the utility of the information, enabling users to effectively integrate it into their decision-making.

Although a regular flow of information is desirable for meeting certain needs, reporting organizations should commit to a single moment in time to provide a consolidated disclosure of their economic, environmental, and social performance. This requires consistency in the frequency of reporting. This is necessary to ensure both comparability over time and accessibility of the report to stakeholders.

Tests:

• Information in the report has been disclosed while it is recent relative to the reporting period.
• The sustainability reporting schedule is aligned with the financial reporting cycle.
• The collection and availability of key performance information is aligned with the sustainability reporting schedule.
• The information in web-based reports clearly indicates the time period to which it relates, when it will be updated and when the last updates were made.

Clarity
Information should be made available in a manner that is understandable by and accessible to stakeholders using the report.

Explanation:
The report presents information in a way (whether in printed form or through other media channels) that is understandable, accessible and usable by the organization’s range of stakeholders. The organization should consider how to meet stakeholders’ communication needs without losing important information, but yet avoiding excessive or unnecessary detail. Within the context of reported information, clarity requires both that information be presented in a manner that enables the stakeholder to find the desired information without unreasonable effort and that the information is understandable. Graphics and consolidated data tables can help make the information in the report accessible and understandable.

Tests:

• The report contains the necessary level of information for the needs of report users, but avoids excessive and unnecessary detail.
• Report users can find the specific information that they want without unreasonable effort through tables of contents, maps, links, or other aids.
• The report includes a glossary or explanation for technical terms, acronyms, jargon or other content that is likely be unfamiliar to report users.
• The data and information in the report is available to major stakeholders including those with particular accessibility needs (differing abilities, language, technology).

Explanation:
The core concept underpinning the principle of assurability is that a stakeholder should have confidence that a report could be checked for the reliability of its contents and its application of reporting principles. The decision-making processes underlying a report should be documented in a manner that would allow a review of the basis of key decisions (such as stakeholder engagement processes and processes for determining the report content and boundary). The information and data included in a report should be supported by internal documentation that could be reviewed by parties other than the report authors. Disclosures about performance that are not supported by internal records or other forms of evidence should not appear in a sustainability report. In designing information systems, reporting organizations should anticipate that the systems could be subject to assurance, including by independent parties.

Tests:

• There is a statement from management taking responsibility for the content and process of preparing the report.
• The scope and extent of assurance, and the stakeholders expected to use the report are identified.
• The original source of all the information in the report can be identified by the organization.
• The organization can attest to the reliability of the original source, and, if not, that fact is disclosed.
•  Representation is available from the original data or information owners, attesting to its reliability or accuracy within acceptable margins of error.
• There is external evidence available from reliable sources for supporting assumptions or approaches to technically complex calculations.

6 of 16