This week marks the launch of our Phase 1 Pilot Study in partnership with Sustainalytics, a leading independent research firm with extensive experience assessing the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance of global companies.
The purpose of this pilot study is to test RDR’s newly revised Phase 1 Methodology in preparation for the 2015 launch of a full annual ranking of several dozen of the world’s largest publicly traded Information and Communication Technology (ICT) companies.
Over the coming month, Sustainalytics analysts will use the newly revised methodology to evaluate 12 publicly traded Internet and telecommunications companies operating around the world. This Phase 1 Pilot methodology is the product of extensive research followed by stakeholder consultation on two earlier drafts (archived here and here).
We are contacting the 12 companies this week to let them know that they have been selected for this pilot. They will be invited to review the initial research results for their own companies before Sustainalytics completes its analysis, after which RDR will work with Sustainalytics to finalize internal and public reports on the pilot’s findings.
While a public report on the lessons learned from the pilot study will be published in the first quarter of 2015, the actual company scores calculated for the pilot study will not be publicly released. Rather, we will use the data gathered from the pilot phase to further refine and adjust the methodology for use in the fully public, inaugural ranking on a much larger selection of companies that will be published in late 2015. We will also organize meetings and calls with stakeholders in the first quarter of 2015 to gather feedback on the pilot findings that will help us to maximize the ranking’s effectiveness and impact.
For more information about the project’s research and implementation timeline, please click here. Please also see our newly revised FAQ.
We are grateful to the many research partners and funders who have enabled the project to reach this exciting stage. RDR staff Priya Kumar and Allon Bar have worked tirelessly over the past months as well. We would also like to thank the hard-working team at Global Integrity who have built the back-end research management system for this pilot study with their research platform, Indaba.
