The EDM Council, the Global Association created to elevate the practice of Data Management, and its Environment, Sustainability and Governance (ESG) Working Group recently completed a nine-month study to investigate, review, and document ESG data challenges. Sponsored by DFIN in partnership with the Data Coalition, our RegTech ESG Series brought together corporate sustainability reporting and ESG subject matter experts who are tasked with developing ESG industry-standard reporting guidelines, under the EDM Council ESG Working Group.
Craig Clay, President of Global Capital Markets at DFIN and board advisor to the Data Coalition, gave the opening remarks about the evolution of ESG. The discussion focused on the development of emerging best practices of the rapidly evolving ESG ecosystem. As Craig stated, “We’re focusing on the need for accurate, timely, and transparent ESG data and data management processes.”
There are issues to address, however, as the early stages of an evolving regulatory standards development can be challenging. John Truzzolino, Director of Corporate Governance Services from DFIN, recently commented that “there is a lot of confusion to ESG data.”
The discussion was moderated by Truzzolino and the panel consisted of Eric Bigelsen, Senior Advisor and Head of the EDM Council, Sharon Basel, Senior Manager of Sustainability, General Motors, Ginny Cassidy, Director, Enterprise Sustainability, Medtronic, and Jill Purcell, Director, PricewaterhouseCoopers.
The first publication in a series from the EDM Councils ESG Working Group on Corporate Reporting Entities will discuss the data challenges and desired data mangment best practices related to environmental, social and governance (ES) data for corporate reporting. The report is available here.
The conversation will continue with recommendations from the Data Coalition ESG Working Group on November 18 at 2:00pm and you can sign up for the event here. The full presentation from the meeting on October 21 is available here.
