Digitalization of our audit reports

FSC digital audit reporting focuses on standardizing the existing FSC audit reporting formats into a new single digital format that is machine readable. Standardized data architecture for FSC FM audit reporting will enable us to access properly audit data, aggregate them and to identify trends, outcomes and risk areas in order to evaluate and improve the FSC system. Future FSC Digital audit reporting will also ensure that public summaries are automatically created in a standardized format, making it much easier for researchers and stakeholders to use and analyse the data they contain on an aggregated level. 

FM Online is the name that was given to the first project that started FSC on the road to digital audit reporting. As well as producing a first draft of the template (in Word rather than Excel), the project involved a dedicated web portal for planning FM evaluations. This latter component has been put on hold; in due course it will be incorporated into a new web portal for Certification Bodies to manage all their work with FSC.

If you would like to understand more about the pivot from the first version of the Digital Audit Reporting template in Word to the current version in Excel you should listen to this episode of the Forests for the Future podcast from December 2021.

Yes. The template can be used offline, while the user prepares, fills in, reviews and finalizes the report in Microsoft Excel.

Yes, FSC will make FSC Digital audit reporting and related solutions mandatory for certification bodies to improve the data quality and usability of FSC forest management audit reports. 

FSC members enabled and supported this decision. During the FSC General Assembly in 2017, the membership approved motion 16 calling for FSC to implement a centralized and enable data analysis to capture trends and identify risks. 

All information from audit reports conforming to FSC data definition will be uploaded to FSC Database and re-used for future audits. Only a portion of the audit report – that is the public summary – will be open and accessible from the FSC International website.

Yes, these statistics will be publicly available. With the successful scaling up of FSC digital audit reporting, all relevant information, which is currently available through individual public summary reports, can be aggregated and analysed from different angles and groups, such as by country, or forest type, etc. This will be made available through the FSC Facts and Figures section on FSC Connect.

Users and access rights will remain the same as now. 

FSC will have access to all the data from the audit reports. However, only some of the data will be available for public users to run aggregated reports. 

Other parts of the data contained in the public summary reports will be available to relevant FSC entities and to researchers with a justified reason for being granted access to the data. For instance, viewing the number of corrective action requests for a given certification body. This data can be used to identify which indicators often spark corrective action requests and hence where FSC standards need to be improved or have additional guidance developed. 

As the scheme owner, FSC takes overall responsibility of data aggregation to ensure transparency, monitor the impact and communicate properly to stakeholders. However, the certification bodies remain responsible for the data entered in the database and its lawful provision.

Yes, collection and evaluation of sensitive or confidential information is a natural part of certification, and that means some confidential information will be uploaded to the FSC certificates database, all the while respecting and adhering to all relevant privacy legislation such as the European GDPR legislation. 

This is no change from the present situation, where confidential information is also part of the mandatory information collected by certification bodies and manually processed.

When confidential information is included in the audit report, it will be treated as confidential when uploaded into the database. 

All sensitive information and data shall be treated with discretion and in conformity with the data protection requirements, such as EU GDPR requirements, with access only granted on an approved and as-needed basis.

In case local laws and regulations prevent confidential or sensitive information to be collected via certification audits, FSC shall be notified, as it would be a case of conflict with legal requirements for FSC certification.

There will be no change in the information currently collected by certification bodies. As is the case today, certain personal information will be uploaded, including:

• contact person for certification body,  
• names and expertise of auditors,  
• name of per reviewer, and 
• names and contact details of group members where allowed by the legislation.

All personal identifiable information will be excluded from public access unless the relevant consents were granted. The publishing or not of the personal information will be at the discretion of the Certification Body. All sensitive information and data will be treated with discretion and in conformity with the EU GDPR requirements. 

In case local laws and regulations prevent such information to be collected via certification data, FSC shall be notified as it would be a case of conflict with legal requirements for FSC certification.

The database will be stored in a centralized Microsoft data centre in Europe, which will enable us to provide the highest level of data protection, in conformity with the EU GDPR requirements. 

Access to the database will be subject to identity management, ensuring that strict access management to the data can be put in place.

No. The new template will contain similar information as in the previous reports, as it follows the same normative requirements, stipulated in FSC-STD-20-007b, and evolves with the future revision of FSC-STD-20-007.

The main change is that the new public summary will make the information easier to digest across different certification bodies and that the data fields containing data, which can be aggregated, will now be easily available for trend analysis and risk identification.

FSC has been asked by our stakeholders to make it easier to monitor impact and evaluate the effect of FSC certification. To enable this, we are reviewing the current scope of data that is required as part of the current revision of FSC-STD-20-007. This revision includes public consultation.

It is important that FSC improves in reporting on impact monitoring and evaluation, and we welcome all comments and proposals during the ongoing revision of FSC-STD-20-007 in 2020.

There are three levels of requirements in an FSC FM standard: principle, criterion and indicator. The principles define the backbone of the FSC definition of a sustainable forest management. Each principle is broken down into a series of criteria of what must be met to be FSC certified. The national – or regional – working groups define what the indicators should be to prove that a given criterion has been met on a local scale. In cases where there is no national or regional standard, certification bodies can create interim standards. 

The report template provides one possible mechanism for capturing data at the indicator level in a detailed checklist, but the text of the indicators needs to be inserted by the CB, and that part of the report can be replaced with an alternative solution at the option of the CB.

In the future, FSC plans to integrate the digital reporting with a future database of normative requirements, and then the audit template will be able to reflect specific requirements of national standards.

In the short term the platform will cover main evaluation and surveillance evaluation, which are mandatory for certification and support of a FM certificate. 

If in future certification bodies find it useful to add commonly occurring audits, the FSC Digital Audit Reporting team will address this need by adding new features.

FSC digital audit reporting does not currently integrate any GIS software. However, following the adoption of motion 16 at the FSC General Assembly in 2021, mapping of forest management units will become a requirement. This will provide new opportunities for improving the effectiveness of FM audits (e.g. planning specific areas to visit in person) and transparency of audit processes. FSC will proactively explore options to leverage this, whilst ensuring a smooth transition process that does not unduly burden auditors or demand specialist skills in GIS.

In general it is better to allow some bad data to be input than to prevent the entry of good data that does not fit some over-restrictive predetermined notion of what should be valid. Hence early versions of the Excel template provide only some very basic validation of data entered. This will be improved upon and tightened over time. As and when we shift to using a web application much better data validation will be possible.

Plantations often co-exist with natural forests within the same MU. It is not currently possible for certification bodies to mark one MU as including both forest types. The data architecture and database have been designed to enable certification bodies to capture both forest types in a given MU. 

However, this information is not spatially identifiable (meaning that it is not visible on a detailed map with clear borders between plantations and natural forests). It only exists as a data field indicating the areas in terms of numbers.

No, historical data from previous audit reports – in PDF, Word or Excel format – will not be converted into the new template. The primary information of present FM certificate holders in current platform (e.g. company name and contacts) will be copied to the new database. This project will only provide solutions for future audit reports.

The current version of the template has been tested using the latest versions of Excel for Windows (Version 2102, Build 13801.21092), Excel for Mac (Version 16.56, Build 21121100), and Excel Online (Build 16.0.14822.35902).