Transparency - from information to wisdom

At PaperTale, we’re always talking about the necessity of transparency for systemic change. But is transparency overrated?

The problem is that it is easy to provide an overload of information and package it as transparency. For example, legislation demands that users need to have read the terms & conditions before using a website. But, how often have you read the terms and conditions really??

There is a fine line between Transparency and information overload. This grey area is exactly where legislation can fall short, and where Transparency risk of become a means in itself as opposed to a means to an end, while the latter is what it should be.?

At PaperTale, the goal of transparency is to provide everyone in the supply chain (as well as the value chain, but we’re still working on that) with the information that can help them making decisions for collective benefit. This information should thus lead to better decision-making, resulting in that information leads to the right kind of knowledge, and hopefully better insights (ideally even wisdom).?

Why is transparency so hard: context?

Sustainability encompasses many things, and there is a big grey area between completely unsustainable and perfectly sustainable.

For example, in the PaperTale app we show the amount of water it took to produce a garment, but what does this data mean? Say a dyeing facility uses a lot of water to colour the garments, but the facility is located in an area where there happens to be a lot of water. Another facility uses a lot less water, but there is much less water available locally. Which one of these two is more sustainable??

Likewise, to what extent a supplier is able to decarbonise depends on the extent to which they can use primary energy sources that are renewable. Mostly, these primary energy sources for electricity are set at national levels, and in most countries, fossil fuels are still the dominant source. Any facility that wants to decarbonise is therefore still limited by their dependence on other factors like governance. When we see a high number of water use or carbon emission, it’s easy to write a facility off as unsustainable. But in the circumstances in which they are operating, a facility may in fact be doing a great job. This is why it’s more helpful to show numbers in their proper context - by comparing to local counterparts, and to their own performance in the past.?

In conclusion, the wrong type of Transparency may make us jump to conclusions of reinforcing the blame culture that we discussed two weeks ago. In the end, we need information to progress, and we need Transparency that leads to action. But how we create such Transparency is the ultimate challenge.?Next week we will look deeper into what role legislation can play in achieving actionable Transparency.?

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