GRI is the organisation that has pioneered the development of a sustainability reporting framework. Its aim is to make the disclosure on economic, environmental and social performance as commonplace and comparable as financial reporting. This seems to be a start towards making an industry standard in digital financial reporting, perhaps towards being compulsory one day. Currently, it's comply or explain, but businesses would be wise to get used to a digital system before it is standardised, and hopefully regulated.

On Thursday April 1st, the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) - the Canadian equivalent to the SEC, put forth allegations against Agoracom.com an online investor relations forum for seeding fake conversations throughout their investor message board community. The allegations describe a scenario of more than 24,000 fraudulent posts made by 670 different accounts In the amount of time it took to create all these fake posts and different accounts, maybe they could have done something constructive? People don't seem to realise how much their actions are tracked on the internet. Beyond embarrassing, it's also becoming a grounds for legal action

A wide range of groups, from patriot organizations to militias and even white supremacists, are using social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and YouTube to organize and even espouse illegal activities. Racism has never been so easy.

In Jamaica, the new Cybercrimes Act makes directors, managers, secretaries or other similar officers of that body corporate liable. As the author writes "Being a director on any or many boards is no longer sexy." Which may be true, especially when million dollar fines and imprisonment may be at stake. It is hoped that all this will encourage workers to take their roles more seriously, but it may take a few hiccups (ie imprisonings) until this is a shared mentality.

And I thought the 'Fusion Powerplant" in Sim City 2000 being a peak accomplishment of the game was enough of a green message. Choose your industry and try to be a 'good' CEO. It seems like a kind of layman's e-learning on social responsibility for managers, or perhaps is the ideal way to train us MTV-generation managers of the future.

Also "Directors of the UK's biggest 350 listed companies should also stand for re-election every year, instead of at least every three years, to increase accountability under recommendations in the revised code." Frequent re-election should keep directors more or their toes, or will it make them spend more time trying to defend their positions instead of doing their jobs? Time will tell.

"The government plans to enroll its officials in a range of courses, from stress-busting to the art of speaking persuasively." It seems that Russia is realising that a such clips as their president falling down due to drunkenness is no longer a quick news byte. Rather it is a viral video that will circulate the web for years to come. As a reaction, it seems Russia is becoming more self-conscious.

"The invisible shareholders, who are either money launderers, drug dealers or some people using government money, pick the directors of the banks because of their holdings, but have refused to disclose their identities," he said.

The chairman of Vanguard believes corporate directors are doing a much better job than they get credit for in terms of governance but offers suggestions for improvement. Brennan believes it is crucial to take an active role in governance, to see yourself in a framework and communicate freely. It remains to be seen whether the 'attitudinal shift' that has been observed over the past 2 decades will continue to become a norm, of it is merely keeping up with the Jones's.

Corporate governance is becoming more and more important, and in considering the growing economies in the Gulf states, there is considerable interest in the region. It will be interesting to see how models of corporate governance may differ in the Gulf countries, especially in relation to board members.