Transparency and the Environment

Transparency is going to become a greater issue in the field of environmental monitoring.  Over the past few 10 years, many municipalities and water utilities across North America have begun to post laboratory results relating to drinking water quality on the Internet.  Companies engaged in land development, remediation or natural resources development face pressure not only to implement comprehensive monitoring and adaptive management programs, but to be accountable by making the results of those programs publicly available.  It will only be a matter of time before all public and private organizations will be encouraged or even required by regulation to make their monitoring data freely available to those who might be interested.


Transparency is a popular 'buzzword' these days.  The fallout from the 2008 financial meltdown and the gulf oil spill has resulted in the public's intolerance of corporate secrets and controlled releases of information.  The stunning popularity of social networking reflects our 'gotta know it now' culture.  It's clear that companies who share their financial statements and business strategies will be better accepted by their current and future customers.  The stock market also responds better to firms that are upfront with investors and analysts. Similarly, companies that can demonstrate due diligence with respect to the environment will be better respected by their customers and the market.

We shouldn't talk about transparency and environmental monitoring without acknowledging the importance of data management.  You really can't seriously consider sharing your monitoring data with others unless you store it in a well-designed databases.  Transparency is perhaps the key long-term business driver to develop a data management strategy.
Here's a few reasons for your organization to become transparent with respect to your environmental monitoring programs:

• Transparency will generate value to a wider audience.  Once you provide a mechanism for sharing data, your stakeholders (public, regulators, employees, researchers) will start to place a higher value on the information collected and the effort required to collect that information. You will find that your database becomes seen as an asset instead of an expense;
• Transparency will lower the cost of data management.  You will find that once you provide a tool for your stakeholders to access information themselves, you will increase the speed of delivery and eliminate costly barrier; and,
• Transparency will improve data quality.  One of the barriers to sharing environmental data with stakeholders has a fear of distributing erroneous data.  I'm a strong advocate of doing all you can to load correct data into a database.  However, there are lots of situations where errors in both historical and future data may be unavoidable.  If you implement a feedback mechanism whereby identified data errors can be fixed, you might find that your stakeholders become more engaged and participate in the improvements of your asset.

What do you think about environmental monitoring data transparency?  Should you hide your data in a thick appendix or should you catch up with the rest of the business world and implement a solution to share your data?