Find all of the resources you need to make the most of your TISCreport account
Corporate Transparency Report FAQ What is supply chain transparency?
Companies asked to comply by the UK Home Office Why do I need to share my supply chain?
Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act is focussed on transparency in supply chains. We're a Transparency in Supply Chains register. Tracking compliance documents are only part of what we do (we work with the Home Office for monitoring compliance with the Modern Slavery Act). Our system aggregates potential non-financial supply chain risks and makes it available to buyers.
We enable companies complying with Section 54 to simultaneously use their supplier data to:
- evidence their compliance (sharing suppliers is an act of supply chain transparency)
- track compliance and supply chain risks within their tier 1 suppliers
- authenticate the identities of their Compliance Officers in relation to their companies
- increase the transparency of their larger (and smaller!) buyers, reducing their supply chain risk.
Only your suppliers will see that you've added them to your dashboard, if they have also been fully authenticated via one of the subscription methods. Similarly, you as a supplier will only be able to see which private buyers are monitoring your transparency on TISCreport if they have been fully authenticated, giving you complete peace of mind on confidentiality and security.
As Section 54 requires you to report what steps you are taking, joining the TISCreport community for monitoring your supply chains is a zero or low cost step that you can report in your next Modern Slavery Statement.
You can see all the local government bodies that have shared their supply chains on our new transparency map: https://tiscreport.org/public-sector/uk-transparency-report/
Many big brands have also shared their supply chains as open data. This trend is set to continue and accelerate.
Supplier Dashboard How does sharing our tier 1 suppliers reduce our supply chain risks?
TISCreport is a live register tracking available transparency data for companies all over the world, not just the UK. Unlike other corporate intelligence sources, we focus purely on non-financial risk data. You can simply use TISCreport to track compliance with Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act, or you can use it to track other corporate behaviour indicators. To put things into context, the indicators of the failure of Carrillion were not in their financials, but in their supply chain. Supply chain transparency is not only good for tackling corruption and modern slavery, it can also save your organisation from having to deal with the fallout from the collapse of a buyer or supplier. You can start by creating your own dashboard on TISCreport and checking to see what data is available for your suppliers.
TISCreport Global Human Rights Due Diligence FAQ what are the different supply chain transparency and/or modern slavery related laws in the world?
UK City Transparency Map Who else is working on tackling modern slavery in supply chains in local government?
Lots of organisations are working hard in this space and we'll list them here as they get in touch. However one organisation that has done a phenomenal amount of work specifically on local government bodies is the Local Government Association. They have produced a portal specifically devoted to supply chain transparency that you can see here:
https://www.local.gov.uk/transparency-supply-chain-tisc-msa-s54-council-statements-portal
They have also been very helpful in providing links to statements that our bots had not found yet, and it is with thanks that we've added them to the map. They will show on the map after the usual automated checks.
Welsh Government Ethical Employment in Supply Chains CoP Are our suppliers' account linked to our own account?
Yes, but your supplier will also appear in multiple other dashboards because (usually) you will not be the only organisation purchasing from them. Their account belongs to them but will be linked to yours. By adding them to your own dashboard you will be able to receive updates on their compliance and commitment status. Your suppliers in turn will be able to add their own tier 1 suppliers and monitor their transparency through the system. TISCreport enables each member to be able to choose to share their supply chain data to enable their own customers to increase the transparency of their supply chains. You as a procuring entity can choose whether or not you require them to do this on a proportion of their supply chain.
Welsh Government Ethical Employment in Supply Chains CoP What kind of accounts can suppliers have?
For companies unable to afford basic membership (which starts at £200+VAT per annum) there is a free membership level that enables them to share their commitments, compliance statements and supply chain data at no cost. This means that there is absolutely no financial barrier to taking part in the mission to drive transparency through entire supply chains.
Corporate Transparency Score and Certification What challenges does the TISCreport Transparency Score address?
TISCreport aims to overcome several challenges through the transparency score, including greenwash, fear of losing competitive advantage, the complexity of global supply chains, high costs of comprehensive reporting, and the lack of a standardised framework for non-financial reporting. By addressing these challenges, the score helps companies not only measure but also improve their transparency.
Corporate Transparency Report FAQ What is non-financial risk and how does it relate to transparency?
UK City Transparency Map How can you measure the transparency of a city?
A city is a collection of a number of organisations and networks. We've started our map looking at local government bodies (councils of all types) because these are already the most transparent in terms of visibility of supply chain. The more organisations we can see in that city, and the relationships they have with each other and their suppliers, the more transparent they become.
Whilst transparency itself isn't a quantifiable measure, we have defined a number of levels of transparency to help us measure progress.
Level 0 Transparency is when you know exactly who you are buying from. This means that we are able to match a supplier to an exact financial entity with a unique reference number that is recognisable across other systems. This could be a company number as held in Companies House, or it could be a VAT number. There are unique numbers called DUNS, which are a proprietary reference number created by Dun & Bradstreet, and there are other open formats called Legal Entity Identifiers (LEIs). In the latter case LEIs can be issued to "natural persons" if they are actiing in an independent business capacity.
Level 1 Transparency is where it gets interesting. This is where suppliers share their own tier 1 suppliers. Transparency increases exponentially at this point and we can start to do some very clever predictive analytics with this live data.
Beyond Level 1 the focus is about seeing deeper into supply chains on a more or less live basis. Interestingly, our research is starting to show us that whilst individuals are connected through six or seven degrees of freedom, you need far less to identify exploitation within supply chains.
UK Modern Slavery Act What is the modern slavery act 2015?
The Modern Slavery Act will enable law enforcement to tackle modern slavery by providing law enforcement agencies with tools to fight the perpetrators and strengthen protections for victims. In addition, the Act includes a ground breaking transparency in supply chains measure which requires any organisation carrying on business in the UK and with a total turnover of £36M or more to produce an annual statement on the steps they are taking to prevent modern slavery in their supply chains and own organisation.
Corporate Transparency Score and Certification What are the key areas covered by the Transparency Score?
The fundamentals level of scoring covers social and corporate governance metrics that can be automatically tracked and aggregated into a single score.
The full transparency scoring, which is encompassed in the comprehensive Exemplar level, covers a wide range of areas. These include corporate governance, sustainability and CSR reporting, ethics and compliance, stakeholder engagement, risk management, supply chain transparency, public disclosures, lobbying and political contributions, data privacy and security, and more.
AI (Artificial Intelligence) Audit Is this an official audit by the Home Office?
No. We are not a part of the Home Office. We were referred to in the Home Office letter in 2017 to over 17k CEOs asking them to comply with Section 54 but we are a completely independent social enterprise. We reported and represented our members via the Home Office Transparency in Supply Chains Modern Slavery Strategy and Implementation Group in order to help inform policy and strategy going forward. We continue to represent members and present findings from our ongoing compliance work on the Home Office Prevention Forum. Our Transparency in Supply Chains platform TISCreport brings together open data, closed data and shared data on non-financial due diligence and supply chain risks. Our data is used in procurement decisions by over 350 local government bodies and several hundred thousand companies.
As such, our automated audit results does not influence the Home Office audit one way or the other. However, we have communicated frequently with Home Office Modern Slavery Unit, clarifying many of the criteria that have been causing confusion amongst companies, and have implemented our algorithm accordingly. This increases the likelihood of your compliance statement satisfying the expected criteria.
Welsh Government Ethical Employment in Supply Chains CoP If another organisation has the same suppliers as me, then do I have to upload my suppliers to the site again?
Yes. TISCreport aggregates buying leverage from all members who are procuring from suppliers, and in uploading your suppliers you are encouraging them to take the Code of Practice and Modern Slavery Act seriously. You will be able to track not only compliance but any emerging supply chain risks TISCreport has access to. If you are procuring through a central procurement consortium however, you can specify the consortium in your supplier dashboard instead along with identifying invoices from them and other direct suppliers for identification purposes. Your supply chain transparency will then consider the supplier data from your chosen consortium (or consortia).
UK Modern Slavery Act How are you ensuring that there are no conflicts of interest between the business members you represent and your work and donations towards preventing slavery in supply chains?
The first and most important thing we've done is to be an open data initiative. This means that our data is available for all to scrutinise, correct and add to. No matter what happens to us, our data will remain available to all under open data licence.
The second thing we've done is set up three tiers of scrutiny by a three tier governance structure: our overarching governance board, our business advisory panel and our data strategy board. We report to all three, and these in turn monitor everything we do, from our partnerships, to setting best practice to how we administer our open data.
The third step is becoming a b-corp. As a social enterprise by b-corp, we have signed up to levels of business transparency usually required of significantly larger companies.
We set up tiscreport as a social enterprise to end modern slavery in partnership with all those who wish to work with us. We do not, and never will, provide a safe haven for deliberately bad actors, and are wholly focussed on creating transparency tools and providing good quality data to make doing the right thing really easy. We hope that you will join us too.
Companies asked to comply by the UK Home Office What exactly is TISCreport?
TISCreport is the world's largest Transparency In Supply Chains Register. We work with the Home Office, Welsh Government, and numerous other UK Government Departments. Our mission is to join compliance with Transparency and Human Rights legislation at the top to vulnerable workers on the ground. We're doing this all over the world with a rapidly growing community of businesses who believe that there is no room for exploitation of any kind in their supply chains. The Home Office has launched a self-reporting registry for Modern Slavery Statements. However, TISCreport remains the only register that tracks which companies have to comply for Section 54 of the UK Modern Slavery Act, Payment Practices Reporting Regulations, Gender Pay Gap reporting and many other regulations. We report to the relevant authorities on compliance related metrics.
We have a full set of FAQs available for you to find out more about us and our mission.
Companies asked to comply by the UK Home Office What is your relationship with the Home Office?
In 2015 we were asked by the Home Office back to create a self-sustaining solution to help monitor compliance with Section 54 of the UK Modern Slavery Act. It would have cost the UK tax payer several million pounds to create a Modern Slavery statement repository within UK Government. Our social enterprise, Semantrica Ltd, committed to creating an open data register, TISCreport, where the cost would be borne by those in the private sector who could afford to pay. Zero taxpayer money has been spent developing TISCreport.org and we rely on membership fees to continue our Supply Chain Transparency work.
Our official relationship with the Home Office is now through our seat on the UK Home Office Transparency In Supply Chains Advisory Group. This feeds into the Modern Slavery Strategy and Implementation Group (MSSIG). We also report regularly on compliance figures back to the Home Office Modern Slavery Unit.
UK City Transparency Map Is the data in your map the complete picture?
No, but we think that it's the most complete picture available at present. It is helped by the fact that so many of our public buyers are working hard to fill out their own parts of the jigsaw puzzle here in the UK. The TISCreport system is receiving and searching for transparency data constantly which buyers are able to access. We have big plans for making this map more useful, but we've published it in time for Anti-Slavery Month as a baseline for measuring public sector supply chain transparency over time.
UK Modern Slavery Act Are you an official partner of the Home Office for this reporting?
No. We are a social enterprise and charity partnership aiming to use your statements to end modern slavery within our lifetimes. We announced, at the Home Office TISC event on 21st March 2016, that we were setting up a central repository working with the UK Modern Slavery Helpline, and Resource Centre. We continue to support and report our findings via the UK Home Office Transparency In Supply Chains Strategy and Implementation Group.
UK City Transparency Map Why did TISCreport produce this map?
We're a social enterprise with a supply chain transparency for social justice mission. We started this mission because we saw that the absence of good data often led to bad policy, and bad policy impacts real lives. So we've created the first iteration of a UK city transparency map so that we can ensure that any changes in policy relating to modern slavery, human trafficking and labour exploitation are evidence-based. The map establishes a baseline so that we can see changes in time.
For the full background look at our report here:
https://pressreleases.responsesource.com/news/96331/modern-slavery-act-tiscreport-uk-2018-city-transparency-map-goes-live/
