G&A Update Newsletter Article

ISSUE 6 | ARTICLE 7 | JANUARY 2012

From Global Reporting Initiative: Test the Taxonomy: GRI Releases Draft XBRL Taxonomy for Public Comment

In December 2011 GRI invited organizations and experts to test a new format for reports based on the GRI Guidelines and using XBRL tools (Extendible Business Reporting Language).  The test will be available until late-January.

The draft XBRL taxonomy (as usually discussed in association with the XBRL abbreviation, "principles, dictionary or system of classification") was produced jointly with Deloitte and is designed to be a resource for providing sustainability data that will help investors, auditors and analysts to access and assess information in corporate sustainability reports – faster and more simply.

The GRI and Deloitte- produced draft XBRL Taxonomy covers both the G3 Guidelines and GRI's latest G3.1 Guidelines. The GRI Taxonomy has been reviewed by an expert Taxonomy Review Team, whose members weighed in with comments:

• Rina Levy, Senior ESG Analyst at Bloomberg:  "This is a really exciting time for sustainability reporting – the new taxonomy will really open up the information in reports and help investors and analysts find the data they need much more quickly and easily."


• Inés García-Pintos, Head of CSR and Innovation at CECA: "Public feedback is vital. This XBRL taxonomy is for everyone, so we need to make sure it is as suitable and as high quality as possible. We urge organizations that report using the GRI Guidelines to help us achieve this by testing out the taxonomy and giving feedback to GRI."
  
  
• Cees de Boer, CFO at Deloitte Netherlands and also board member at XBRL International: "The new GRI Taxonomy will enable organizations to tag their sustainability data in reports, The new GRI Taxonomy will enable organizations to tag their sustainability data in reports. "The GRI Taxonomy will help organizations improve the quality and integrity of their sustainability performance data. This will help investors, auditors and other report users to access and compare GRI data more quickly and easily without the need for excessive manual work."
  
  
• Pedro Faria, Technical Director at Carbon Disclosure Project: "XBRL will have an important role to play in increasing accessibility to climate change and sustainability data in a user friendly, globally recognized format. Critical to the success of this project is ensuring that key stakeholders are closely involved in testing the taxonomies as they develop. I would like to invite all organizations to test and use the new GRI taxonomy as an essential contribution for its development."

During the comment period ending January 23, 2012 participants could review the Taxonomy and related documentation, see how the taxonomy is applied, and test the taxonomy by applying it to their reports. Feedback on these aspects will help GRI improve the taxonomy.

Click here for more information about the XBRL Taxonomy project.

Contents © 2012 by G&A Institute – All Rights Reserved. Please credit G&A Institute as the source if content is reproduced.

• Issue #6 Headlines | January 2012
• Update on Corporate Sustainability & Responsibility Reporting in December 2011
• Featured Social Responsibility Report: US Army/Dept of Defense
• Trendwatching: Corporate Scorecards for McDonald's and Starbucks
• Trust Across America™ Names G&A's Hank Boerner to "Top 100 Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business Behavior"
• Apple Names Names in January 2012 Supplier Responsibility Report
• Brazil's Stock Exchange Recommends Listed Company Sustainability Reporting,  Movement Toward Listing Requirements Seen in Other Nations
• From GRI:  Test the Taxonomy: GRI Releases Draft XBRL Taxonomy for Public Comment
• New from GRI: Website to be "Hub" for Sustainability & Reporting Information
• Governance & Accountability Institute: Now Data Partner for the United Kingdom & Republic of Ireland
• Does Sustainability & Responsibility Reporting Matter to Investors? An Analysis by G&A Institute of Fortune 500