Sustainability in Government
Reporting
Mandatory reporting
Departments and agencies are required to report on their energy consumption to the Australian Greenhouse Office, using the Energy Data Gathering and Reporting (EDGAR) tool.
Departments and agencies are also required to include a statement in their Annual Reports on how their policy, programme, regulatory, legislative and operational activities accord with the principles of ecologically-sustainable development. This is a statutory requirement, outlined in s516A of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.
Voluntary reporting
Agencies may also wish to consider the business value in additional measurement and disclosure. The Centre for Public Agency Sustainability Reporting has recently completed a survey of this reporting, including the arguments for doing so.
Some public and private sector organisations are choosing to report publicly on their environmental performance through Public Environment Reports (PER). Others are choosing to provide information about their social and financial performance in a sustainability report or a triple bottom line report. Some organisations have also entered into commitments that require reporting on performance, such as the Greenhouse Challenge .
Key developments in voluntary agency reporting include:
- DEWHA has produced a triple bottom line report on its operations in 2003-04 and 2004-05, and will release a Sustainability Report for 2005-06 performance
- The Department of Family and Community Services (FaCS) has released three triple bottom line reports
- The Department of Defence published their first public environment report in 2003
- CSIRO has published occupational health, safety and environment annual reports [PDF]
- The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) published a corporate social responsibility report for 2003-04 [PDF]
- The Global Reporting Initiative published a pilot version of their public agency sector supplement in March 2005
- The Australian Customs Service has commenced putting GRI indicators in their Annual Report