Adopting Semantic Technologies for Effective Corporate Transparency

Maria Mora-Rodriguez, Ghislain Auguste Atemezing, Chris Preist

Abstract: A new transparency model with more and better corporate data is necessary to promote sustainable economic growth. In particular, there is a need to link factors regarding non-financial performance of corporations - such as social and environmental impacts, both positive and negative - into decision-making processes of investors and other stakeholders. To do this, we need to develop better ways to access and analyse corporate social, environmental and financial performance information, and to link together insights from these different sources. Such sources are already on the web in non-structured and structured data formats, a big part of them in XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language). This study is about promoting solutions to drive effective transparency for a sustainable economy, given the current adoption of XBRL, and the new opportunities that Linked Data can offer. We present (1) a methodology to formalise XBRL as RDF using Linked data principles and (2) demonstrate its usefulness through a use case connecting and making the data accessible.