As the UK ticks over into the new financial year, the latest report 5th April 2018 on corporate compliance with section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act has been produced by TISCreport.org. This showed 50.8% of organisations (9627 out of 18939) that should have complied by now still have no locatable statements*. This compares with 50.6% as reported in TISCreport’s interim briefing at Westminster in September 2017 at the halfway point.
What’s more, a unique data sharing alliance with the UK Anti-Slavery Helpline, run by Unseen, has been enabled by the platforms GOV.UK compatible architecture**. With in excess of 0.5 Million UK supplier records in TISCreport, the critical mass in order to drive change through supply chains has been reached. The data sharing alliance is breaking new ground by joining live compliance data sets at the top of supply chains with geographical modern slavery hotspots on the ground.
Andrew Wallis OBE, CEO of Unseen says of the alliance: “The power of a solidly built register that works with UK Government systems means that our anonymised and redacted data can help companies who subscribe identify where their greatest risks lie, just by sharing their business premises with TISCreport. There is no other register where our data could possibly have this sort of impact.”
Says Jaya Chakrabarti MBE, CEO of TISCreport, “TISCreport is the only live platform in existence capable of proving non-compliance of individual financial entities. We’ve built our system to enable procurers to quickly check their supply chains for compliance, partial compliance and non-compliance. Just by uploading their suppliers, buyers can keep their supply chains transparent, and they can do this for free.”
TISCreport tracks websites of all those companies and groups known by the system to be over £36M as well as recording voluntary compliance from organisations below the threshold. More critically, the system automatically alerts companies that are overdue that they need to take action where social media or email contact details are available.
The TISCreport dynamic dataset is continually being updated, and there are now 917 UK public bodies within the system. It is a certified open data provider, free to join and enables an in-depth drill down of the data against shared supply chains via private, secure dashboard. Uniquely, beyond the UK, TISCreport interlocks intelligently with related global legislations focussing on supply chain transparency and tackling modern slavery/human trafficking.
Says Stuart Gallemore, CTO of TISCreport, “We’re worked hard to create a platform to help organisations fight modern slavery collaboratively, compatible with global technology systems. With critical mass reached on the compliance side we are now looking to join things up quickly with intelligence on the ground that can help real victims of exploitation. We’re integrating rapidly now with numerous related data sets that provide even deeper insights for all our members. The Anti-Slavery Helpline team are on the front foot with their approach to data sharing. These are exciting times!”
As a B-Corp*** social enterprise, TISCreport funds itself through subscription fees and data services from organisations able to afford the £200 annual fee. 50% of the subscription fee goes directly to anti-slavery charity Unseen, which runs the UK Anti-Slavery Helpline.
* http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/30/section/54/enact...
** https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2015/10/13/the-characteristics-of-a-...
*** http://bcorporation.uk/
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About Unseen/the UK Anti-Slavery Helpline
Unseen is a Bristol-based charity, founded in 2008, that operates across three main areas:
supporting survivors of human trafficking and modern slavery; equipping frontline staff with
the tools to correctly identify victims and take appropriate action; and influencing
governments at a strategic level to create long-lasting solutions to modern slavery. In 2015,
Unseen was awarded, Charity of the Year: with an income of less than £1 million, by Charity
Times Awards.
www.unseenuk.org
@unseenorg
Facebook: unseenuk
phone: 0303 040 2888
info@unseenuk.org
About TISCreport
TISCreport is an open data platform where anyone can easily search for company anti-slavery information. It also provides great resources to the registered organisations to help them actively improve and comply with the legislation through a range of accessible tools, including a supplier dashboard and a machine readable statement builder. It enables companies who have to comply with legislation to check through their suppliers to find out who else needs to comply, and also provides prompts to help them draft their own statements. It is the only open data anti-slavery register built to Government Digital Service (GDS) standards and built upon GDS registers.
As a self-funded B-corp social enterprise it has:
Achieved 0.5M Supplier records and largest data set of modern slavery statements in the world.
Added datasets for TISC CA statements (the Californian Supply Chain transparency act), Conflict Mineral Statements and now EU Non-Financial Reporting Directive
Contacted over 5k UK organisations technically not-in-compliance with the Modern Slavery Act
Presented at Westminster (“50 Shades of Compliance”(!)) in September 2017)
Invited to give evidence to Australian Government within their consultation for their own Modern Slavery Act, and subsequently specifically named in the recommendations to be consulted with and partnered to accelerate their own repository.
Been named as official partners with Welsh Government to administer their Ethical Employment in Supply Chains Code of Practice, and the Home Office
Been assessed by the UK Anti-Slavery Commissioner in his MSA Repository Consultation in January 2017 and again in October 2017 in Australia, and judged to have significant merit.
Been named as a UK Govtech exemplar case study by the Government Digital Service.
Created a Business Advisory Panel with the CBI, CIOB, CIPS, FSB and Business West
Been named an anti-corruption tech finalist at the US Institute of Peace Cloud Tech awards
Been named a Computing Magazine’s Big Data Awards “Best Emerging Technology” Finalist
Been named in the Co-op Party charter against modern slavery for use by local authorities