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| Features, June
2000 |
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| Wired reports carry barbs |
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Internet environmental reporting may well be the shape of
things to come. But Paul Scott has seen the future, and is doesn't work
- yet |
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Almost all companies publishing environmental reports are now
producing electronic versions on the internet. In theory, this
dematerialisation of reports should be encouraged - resources are saved,
costs are minimised, and the reports are available to anyone with a
modem. The reality is a little less rosy. Internet reports are often
difficult to access, time-consuming to download, and reduce company
costs at the expense of the readership's phone bills.
The corporate sector appears convinced that electronic reporting is the
way forward. While the 'dual approach' of paper and electronic ('hard'
and 'soft') dominates among the almost 700 companies currently
reporting, over the past couple of years several major companies have
converted to issuing soft copies only, while others have only ever
reported electronically (see table).
The approaches taken by these companies varies greatly. The first
obstacle for the reader is that rather than leafing through a hard copy
and skimming through the content, absorbing a paragraph here and there
and reading the occasional page in more detail, an electronic report
demands time and attention. Some reports are real web-reports (html).
They can be browsed, and issues picked from a menu, with connecting
links.
The latest report from UK energy giant BP Amoco is in this style: it
contains lots of information for the reader prepared to look for it, but
it's easy to miss important aspects. The BP Amoco report marks a
significant conversion to electronic reporting after its three
individual hard copy reports last year. UK insurer CGNU's report is also
an excellent use of this technology, and the report from Air Products, a
US chemicals company is brief but fast to access and effective.
The advantage of this technology is that is makes best use of the
internet's capabilities. The downside is that most reports follow a tree
structure, with individual issues as the individual branches. Readers
have to visit each 'branch' to get the whole picture - often a tedious
business.
Other reports rely on pdf files, which are accessed via the Acrobat
reader. These pdf reports are basically electronic versions of hard copy
publications. The advantage is that those favouring hard versions can
print them off and read them at leisure. The downside is that some of
the files are massive - I usually give up if the file hasn't downloaded
within thirty minutes, so didn't review the latest offering from the
Hughes Electronics Corporation, a US aerospace company.
Perhaps the way forward is to reach a compromise, and either dispense
with time-consuming sophisticated graphics (see US utility Green
Mountain Power Corporation's site with its straightforward Coalition of
Environmental Responsible Economies report) or offer both simplified and
full versions (as does the excellent site from Credit Suisse, a Swiss
bank, which also offers separate appendices as downloads and specifies
the file size).
There is a trend away from publishing full hard copy reports, with
parallel soft versions, to providing only a short summary hard report
with the main report on the internet. Some of these summaries act more
as guides to the electronic versions - such as BP Amoco's 'BPAmocoalive'
eight-page update, and Swedish IT and communications company Ericsson's
equally succinct 'Guide to Ericsson's Environmental Web Site Reporting'
issued in 1999. There will be a slew of similar versions throughout 2000
as companies save printing costs by publishing summarised hard copies.
Third-party verification of electronic versions is emerging as a major
issue. If a website can be amended and updated at any time, how can the
readership be assured that any verification statement refers to the
current version?
A route around this dilemma is to mark each report passage that has been
verified, with the date the verifiers last looked at it. This is the
approach taken by BP Amoco - which is effective, but potentially costly
in terms of verifiers' fees over the year.
More worrying is that while soft reports are theoretically available to
all, they may become less read. In practice fewer stakeholders will take
the active step of seeking out a company website and investing on-line
time in scanning a report that, had it arrived in the post, might have
been slipped into a briefcase and read during a quiet few minutes.
A further issue is that of archivability. While environmental progress
can be measured against the targets and commitments of a filed hard copy
report several years later, soft versions can change history by being
quietly 'updated'. If the report is not available as a pdf,
stakeholders will find it hard to verify progress year on year if
companies choose not to provide this information.
Judging by the several hours it took to scan even the few reports
detailed here, electronic reporting is not the great boon that will make
access to reports easy and convenient. Companies need to make their
reports available in several ways - full hard copies for those that
prefer them (or a full pdf), summary versions for those that have a mild
interest but no need for in-depth analysis, and well-signposted html
versions that make the most of the internet and the level of detail and
efficient cross-referencing (via hyperlinks) that it can provide.
Paul Scott is director of Next Step Consulting, a London-based firm
focusing on policy, strategy and communication of corporate
environmental and social issues. E-mail: post@nextstep.co.uk Fax: 44 (0)
20 8930 9333
Next Step Consulting's website, www.corporate-register.com gives details
of over 1,700 individual environmental reports
These companies previously produced (but have now discontinued) full 'hardcopy' reports
Companies which have only ever produced 'soft' reports
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