University of Vaasa - Vaasan yliopisto

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reports on paper and in electronic format so that they are available over the intranet
and internet. Major private organizations are increasingly reporting their
environmental and social performance, just as they do their operational performance.
However, in public sector organizations this development is slower, despite some
recent initiatives like the Global Reporting Initiative guidelines (GRI, 2004) for
public agencies. According to this publication, a number of local governments in
countries such as Italy have started to examine sustainability reporting as an
outgrowth of their LA21. The local authorities have a number of other tools that are
being developed to assist public agencies in sustainability planning and goal setting
(e.g. EMSs, environmental audits, sustainability indicators). Therefore, public
organizations often draw on those sustainability tools (e.g. LA21, EMSs) to identify
and collect data/information for reporting. The current state of reporting in the public
sector is a complex mixture of disclosures and reporting on operations, policies,
strategies and the actual economic, environmental and social conditions in an area.
The majority of municipalities (67%) do not use environmental performance
indicators, which shows that the implementation of indicator systems is generally
poor. This management tool is mainly used by the larger municipalities, which is
confirmed by the significant results for workers (p