Exploring ASI Certification data through the Public Dashboard

M&E Insights, September 2021

With the new ASI Public Dashboard launched this month, ASI enables all interested stakeholders simpler access to published and aggregated data on ASI Certifications. The Public Dashboard contains live data, so when a new Certification has been added, it will appear in the Dashboard immediately. This month we have prepared some examples to illustrate how you can use the Public Dashboard to gain insights into the ASI Certification Program.

The first step is to create an account on the Public Dashboard. Go to the Public Dashboard page, click ‘Sign up’ and complete the registration form. A confirmation email with instructions on how to log in for the first time will be sent to your email address.

We have prepared a short overview video that demonstrates the basics.

Once logged in, the front page of the Dashboard shows the total of ASI Certifications by Standard:

From there, you will find tabs that can drill down into the data for:

• Performance Standard Certifications
• Chain of Custody Certifications
• Both

Within those, you can access records and charts for live data according to different variables, including:

• Supply Chain Activity
• Country
• Principle and Criteria
• Conformance Rating
• Current or all Certifications

You can also conduct your own searches for keywords on issues or entities of interest. Click ‘Export’ to download data for further analysis under a Creative Commons licence, which includes a requirement for attribution to ASI.

Using Charts: Supply Chain Activity

There are a range of pre-prepared charts in the Public Dashboard to give an overview of the data at a glance. For example, Supply Chain Activity charts show the degree of ASI Certification uptake along the aluminium value chain, and these can be accessed by clicking one of the submenu’s on the right. Note that a Certification that includes multiple Supply Chain Activities (for example Bauxite Mining, Alumina Refining and Aluminium Smelting) in its Certification Scope will appear in each of the relevant Supply Chain Activity tabs.

ASI Performance Standard Certifications by inclusion of Supply Chain Activity

This chart shows the distribution of ASI Certifications across the 9 identified Supply Chain Activities covered by the ASI Performance Standard. Clicking the tabs above the chart will take you to the individual records for each of these Certifications.

It is possible to filter the data by Date of Issue, for example. If you would like to know what the uptake of ASI Performance Standard Certifications was on 31 December 2020, on the page with ‘All Certificates’ you need to select the filters ‘Date of Issue is before 12/31/2020’ and ‘Revision Number = 0.’ For example, for Casthouses, we see that 39 Certifications had this activity included in their Certification Scope at the end of December 2020.

ASI Chain of Custody by inclusion of Supply Chain Activity

Likewise, this chart shows the distribution of ASI Certifications across the 6 identified Supply Chain Activities covered by the ASI Chain of Custody Standard. Clicking the tabs above the chart will take you to the individual records for each of these Certifications.

While the number of CoC Certifications in the upstream parts of the supply chain appears relatively low, the share of global assets these numbers represent is higher than downstream activities – globally there are only around 120-150 bauxite mines and a similar number of alumina refineries, while post-casthouse businesses number in the tens of thousands. In addition, recently updated ASI data indicates that CoC Material flows (expressed as aluminium content at each stage of the supply chain), are highest from bauxite mining (approx. 59 million tonnes of bauxite expressed in dry tonnes), with each subsequent stage recording reductions in CoC Material demand by around 50%. This is to be expected, as available supply must be built to enable the subsequent supply chain stage to source. However, as customers and consumers increasingly seek assurance that the aluminium in their products is responsibly sourced, the fast growth of CoC Certifications in the Post-Casthouse activity shows that the downstream industry is preparing to meet this demand.

Using filters: Full vs Provisional Certification

The submenu ‘Performance Standard Certifications’ and ‘Chain of Custody Standard Certifications, as shown on the right, contain the dataset for all current Performance Standard or CoC Certifications. A ‘Current Certification’ is the latest version issued after the most recent Audit. There is also a page for ‘All Certifications’, which includes ‘Current Certifications’ and all revisions for a Certification.

By using filters in the Public Dashboard, you can search for specific records by specific criteria. For example, by adding the filter ‘Certification Level’, it is possible to determine how many of the 100 ASI Performance Standard Certifications are ‘Full Certifications’ and how many are ‘Provisional Certifications.’

A Full Certification means that no or only Minor Non-Conformances were found and a 3-year Certification Period has been granted, whereas a Provisional Certification usually means that a Major Non-Conformance was found during an audit and Certification was granted only for a period of 1 year.

However, during the Covid-19 pandemic, Provisional Certification processes where also used where ASI Auditors could not travel to perform an on-site audit to rate conformance with several criteria in the Performance Standard. This has resulted in a number of Provisional Certifications under ASI’s Covid-19 policy.

For the Chain of Custody Standard, audits can be undertaken as a remote/desktop exercise during the COVID-19 pandemic where necessary, without automatically resulting in Provisional Certification.

Understanding performance: Conformance Ratings

The Public Dashboard enables users to view the number and distribution of Conformance Ratings across ASI Performance and Chain of Custody Standard Certifications, at Principle and Criterion level.

The Conformance Rating graphs for all current Performance Standard Certifications (All Principles) can be accessed by clicking the submenu on the right.

This pie chart aggregates Conformance Ratings across all Principles for current Certificates. Each Principle also has its own page in the Public Dashboard where you can access aggregate Conformance Ratings for all Criteria (bar chart) and each Criterion (pie chart).

Note ‘Unable to Rate’ ratings are where the auditor shares interim findings, but cannot currently be rated via remote auditing under ASI’s Covid Policy and will be rated when an onsite audit can be safely conducted.

The same information is available for the Chain of Custody Standard. All Conformance Rating graphs can be accessed by clicking the submenu on the right.

One of the possible reasons for the high percentage of Not Applicable Ratings is that Section 11, Market Credits System, also only applies if an Entity uses Market Credits. No CoC Certified Entity has used Market Credits so far, which is why it has been proposed to eliminate this criterion from the next version of the ASI Chain of Custody Standard.

The ASI Public Dashboard allows you to navigate all current and historical ASI Performance Standard and Chain of Custody Standard Certifications (currently published in individual PDF’s) and Certificate records collected since the inception of the ASI Standards and Certification program in 2018. Through the Public Dashboard, you can now access this ASI Certification data in formats that can also be searched, downloaded and analysed.

Stay tuned for our next M&E Insights article coming in the October newsletter!