Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) have officially launched the GRI Sustainability Taxonomy.
Developed in technical collaboration with TCS, the digital taxonomy framework is designed to revolutionize how organizations report their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance by making sustainability data machine-readable and globally comparable.
Digitizing ESG reporting:
The new taxonomy leverages XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) to tag sustainability disclosures, moving beyond traditional PDF-based reports. By structuring data in a digital format, the initiative ensures that ESG information can be seamlessly ingested by analysts, investors, and regulators using AI and automated data tools.
The shift addresses a critical market need for high-quality, consistent, and verifiable sustainability data that matches the rigor of financial reporting.
Global interoperability:
A core objective of the collaboration is to simplify the reporting landscape for multinational corporations. The GRI Sustainability Taxonomy is built to be interoperable with other major digital standards, including those from the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) and the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS). This allows companies to map their data once and report across multiple jurisdictions, significantly reducing the compliance fatigue associated with dual reporting.
“By making GRI’s standards machine-readable, we are providing the digital infrastructure needed to turn sustainability disclosures into actionable insights,” said Girish Ramachandran, President, TCS Asia Pacific. “This partnership with GRI underscores our commitment to using technology to drive transparency and empower organizations to deliver on their sustainability commitments with confidence.”
Empowering stakeholders:
Beyond compliance, the digital taxonomy enables a dynamic ecosystem where stakeholders can conduct real-time benchmarking and trend analysis. For investors, it eliminates the manual errors associated with scraping data from narrative reports. For corporations, the built-in validation rules provided by the TCS-engineered framework ensure that data is audit-ready, facilitating easier third-party assurance and boosting stakeholder trust.
Accessibility:
To ensure widespread adoption, the digital taxonomy framework includes a dual-submission architecture. While large enterprises can utilize automated XBRL tagging through their existing ERP systems, the initiative also provides web-based tools for smaller companies. This ensures that the transition to digital sustainability reporting is inclusive, allowing organizations of all sizes to participate in the global green economy.
