The XBRL Canada Blog

2010-03-12T12:50:00.002-05:00

IFRS and XBRL - What you need to know now

TORONTO, March 12 /CNW/ - XBRL Canada is holding a webinar on this important topic on March 24th from 12:00 Noon - 1:00 PM.

The SEC Rule regarding XBRL contains a clause stating that "all foreign private issuers that prepare their financial statements in accordance with IFRS as issued by the IASB, will be subject to the same interactive data reporting requirements beginning with a periodic report on Form 10-Q, Form 20-F or Form 40-F containing financial statements for a fiscal period ending on or after June 15, 2011."

In Canada, all companies are required to adopt IFRS beginning with January 1, 2011. This means that IFRS must be applied to the first interim financial statements in 2011.

The end result is that all Canadian Cross-listed companies, which number approximately 350, will be required to adopt both IFRS and XBRL, using the IFRS taxonomy, beginning in 2011 and early 2012.

This webinar focuses on the planning issues that are of concern to Canadian Cross-listed companies in preparing for the adoption of IFRS and XBRL. It will address key questions such as;

- What are the planning implications of the current and emerging

regulations on IFRS and XBRL in Canada and the U.S.?

- What has been the experience of other companies that have already

adopted IFRS and XBRL in other parts of the world?

- What commonalities exist in the planning for XBRL and IFRS adoption

that can be employed to achieve greater efficiency?

- What resources are available to help companies as they move to

implement IFRS and XBRL?

Paul Cherry, Chairman of the Standards Advisory Council of the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC) and former Chair of the Canadian Accounting Standards Board, as well as Wasim Thaha, Chair of XBRL Canada will be speaking at the webinar.

Be sure to reserve this date. Registration is available on the XBRL Canada website at www.xbrl.ca.

XBRL Canada is sponsored and administered by the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants.

For further information: XBRL Canada, Gerald Trites, Project Director, (416) 602-3931, Email: gtrites@xbrl.ca

2010-03-10T10:13:00.002-05:00

XBRL Canada Welcomes the Announcement of the Red Tape Reduction Commission

TORONTO, March 10 /CNW/ - The announcement in the Federal Budget Document tabled in the House of Commons on March 4 that includes a Red Tape Reduction Commission is a welcome move for Canadian business. The complexities of compliance mandated by government agencies are substantial and often redundant.
At present, companies who file with the federal departments and agencies must file a diverse number of different reports, usually in different formats. The inefficiency of this approach costs reporting companies substantial dollars in unnecessary expense for systems maintenance, multiple data input and completion of various forms.
Leveraging the efficiencies of a unified system employing XBRL could save considerable dollars. It is important to note that XBRL is an open standard currently in various stages of use worldwide.
Over twenty countries have implemented programs to reduce the compliance burden and red tape for companies reporting to government agencies. In several of these countries, XBRL is well recognized as an important part of achieving efficiency within these programs.
The Netherlands, for example, recognized this several years ago and has been implementing XBRL throughout government filings. The estimated value of reducing reporting burdens is approximately (euro)400 million per annum. In addition, they say full implementation of XBRL, "with its wide incorporation across relevant financial accounting software packages will result in substantial time savings to business - up to 33% compared to the time required for traditional annual accounts." A similar program is underway in Australia and under consideration in other countries.
The adoption of XBRL for standardizing the reporting of data is a feasible and cost-effective way to achieve the objective of substantially reducing the cost of compliance by Canadian companies. XBRL Canada will welcome the opportunity to present the efficiencies of XBRL to the Red Tape Reduction Commission as part of its initiative.

XBRL Canada is a not-for-profit consortium, funded and supported by the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants, formed to foster and encourage the use of XBRL for greater efficiency in Canadian Business.

For further information: XBRL Canada, Gerald Trites, Project Director, (416) 602-3931, Email: gtrites@xbrl.ca

2010-03-10T10:12:00.000-05:00

IFRS and XBRL in the Oil and Gas Industry - What you need to know now

CALGARY, Mar. 9 /CNW/ - XBRL Canada is holding a seminar on this important topic in Calgary on April 7th at 8:00AM.
There is an urgent need to prepare for the adoption of IFRS in Canada and to understand how the emerging corporate reporting landscape will be impacted by XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language). The SEC in the U.S. has already enacted regulations that cover mandatory reporting in XBRL. In 2011 these SEC rules will have significant implications for Canadian companies as foreign filers using IFRS and the associated IFRS XBRL taxonomy.
This seminar focuses on the planning issues that are of concern to Canadian Oil and Gas companies in preparing for the adoption of IFRS and XBRL. It will address key questions such as;

-   What are the implications of the current and emerging regulations on
        IFRS and XBRL in Canada and the U.S.?
    -   What has been the experience of other companies that have already
        adopted IFRS and XBRL in other parts of the world?
    -   How suitable is the current IFRS XBRL taxonomy for Oil and Gas
        companies and how could the taxonomy be impacted by IASB Extractive
        Activities project?
    -   What resources are available to help companies as they move to
        implement IFRS and XBRL?

Global experts in IFRS and XBRL will be speaking at the seminar. Solution providers will also demonstrate their products and will be available to discuss best practices.
Cost of the seminar is $50 per person. Registration is available through the XBRL Canada website at www.xbrl.ca.
XBRL Canada is supported and administered by the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants

For further information: XBRL Canada, Gerald Trites, Project Director, (416) 602-3931, Email: gtrites@xbrl.ca

2010-03-05T08:35:00.004-05:00

Red Tape Reduction Commission
by Gerald Trites

The Federal Budget tabled yesterday contained an interesting announcement that is very pertinent to what the XBRL community is trying to accomplish. The announcement was as follows:

"Red Tape Reduction Commission: A commission, involving both parliamentarians and private sector representatives, will be established to review federal regulations in areas where reform is most needed to reduce the compliance burden and provide specific recommendations for improvement."

The Budget report tabled yesterday goes on to say:

"Reducing red tape for businesses is an ongoing challenge that requires continued attention. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) estimates that businesses in Canada currently spend over $30 billion each year complying with regulations."

At present companies who file with the federal departments and agencies must file a diverse number of different reports, usually in different formats. The inefficiency of this approach costs the filers millions of dollars, perhaps billions, in unnecessary expense for systems maintenance, data input and form completion. If they were able to use a standard system - XBRL - they could save considerably in these areas.

Over twenty countries around the world have implemented programs to reduce the compliance burden and red tape for companies dealing with the governments. In several of these countries, XBRL has been considered and/or recognized as a way to assist with achieving the goals of these programs.

The Netherlands, for example, recognized this several years ago and has been implementing XBRL across the board for government filings. "It was in response to concern for the enormous incidence of duplication in reporting that the Netherlands Government in 2004 launched a major initiative known as the Dutch Taxonomy Project."

"In their progress report to the Dutch Government in April 2006 officials indicated that from January 2007 the majority of small and medium sized businesses would be required only to provide annual accounts data to the Chamber of Commerce (thus replacing traditional multiple reporting arrangements). The XBRL taxonomy will make it possible to supply the data to other institutions with 'just one push of the button'. The estimated value of burden reduction from this measure is put at approximately €400 million per annum. In addition, full implementation of the Dutch XBRL taxonomy in 2007, with its wide incorporation across relevant financial accounting software packages will result in substantial time savings to business- up to 33% compared to the time required for traditional annual accounts." (emphasis added). A similar program is underway in Australia and under consideration in other countries.

The adoption of XBRL for rationalizing the reporting of data to governments is a feasible and cost-effective way to achieve the laudable objective of substantial reduction in the cost of compliance by Canadian companies. The new Red Tape Reduction Commission should give top priority to its consideration.

2010-02-19T10:36:00.000-05:00

XBRL Canada to Hold a Webinar on Mar 24 dealing with IFRS and XBRL Implementation

TORONTO, Feb. 19 /CNW/ - XBRL Canada is holding a webinar on this important topic on March 24th from 12:00 Noon - 1:00 PM.
The SEC Rule regarding XBRL contains a clause stating that "all foreign private issuers that prepare their financial statements in accordance with IFRS as issued by the IASB, will be subject to the same interactive data reporting requirements beginning with a periodic report on Form 10-Q, Form 20-F or Form 40-F containing financial statements for a fiscal period ending on or after June 15, 2011."
In Canada, all companies are required to adopt IFRS beginning with January 1, 2011. This means that IFRS must be applied to the first interim financial statements in 2011.
The end result is that all Canadian Cross-listed companies, which number approximately 350, will be required to adopt both IFRS and XBRL, using the IFRS taxonomy, in 2011.

For the rest of the press release, please follow this link.

2010-02-10T10:40:00.000-05:00

Forthcoming XBRL Events

2010 is shaping up to be a big year for XBRL in Canada. XBRL adoption driven by the SEC rules has already started and will escalate between now and mid 2011. Other organizations are showing an interest in XBRL for internal purposes. As a result, XBRL Canada is planning a series of events:

March 24, 2010. There will be a Webinar featuring Paul Cherry, veteran of International Accounting Standard Setting, discussing IFRS adoption, along with Wasim Thaha who will comment on the related XBRL implications. This webinar will be the first of a series.

April 7, 2010 will see a seminar in Calgary devoted to the relationship between IFRS and XBRL adoption for the Oil and Gas Industry.

Further information about these events will be forthcoming shortly. Other events are in the early planning stage.

And from April 20 - 22, the 20th XBRL International Conference will be held in Rome with a theme of "Linking Businesses, Public Regulators & Citizens." This event will be of particular interest to those who are considering XBRL adoption for governmental purposes beyond securities regulation, an area where Europe has been a leader.

Stay tuned to this blog and the XBRL Canada Website for further details and additional events.

2010-01-21T07:35:00.000-05:00

New IAASB Publication on XBRL

The International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB) has released a new awareness document explaining the relationship of IAASB Standards and XBRL and pointing out that the current standards were not developed with XBRL in mind. As the press release says,

"Recognizing the growing international use of Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL)—a language for the electronic communication of business and financial data that is changing business reporting around the world—the staff of the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB) has developed a new question-and-answer publication. It is designed to raise awareness about how XBRL-tagged data is prepared and how it may affect financial reporting.
Entitled XBRL: The Emerging Landscape, the publication explains that the IAASB’s current International Standards on Auditing (ISAs) were not developed with XBRL in mind and, accordingly, do not require auditors to perform procedures on XBRL-tagged data as part of a financial statement audit. It clarifies how XBRL may lead to a demand for various types of assurance and related services engagements, and describes the scope of the IAASB’s planned consultations to determine whether to develop a new international pronouncement addressing XBRL.
“As more and more financial authorities begin to require or permit entities to provide financial information in XBRL, now is the time to help educate users about some XBRL fundamentals, and for the IAASB to explore whether and how a related international standard might help address assurance needs,” says James Gunn, IAASB Technical Director. “A number of organizations are involved in XBRL initiatives and we look forward to hearing the viewpoints of preparers, users, regulators, national standard-setters, auditors, and others on this important topic,” adds Mr. Gunn.
The publication is available to download free of charge from the IAASB section of IFAC’s Publications and Resources site: web.ifac.org/publications."

2010-01-15T16:28:00.000-05:00

Survey Shows Companies in the US are getting ready for XBRL

XBRL US, the XML standard setter for business information reporting in the U.S., announced today that public companies are heeding the advice to "start early" in preparing for XBRL adoption, according to a joint survey with the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). 73% of respondents said that they have begun preparations for adoption of XBRL. Most of those surveyed, 93%, had at least a basic knowledge of XBRL. See a report on the survey at this site.

The situation is very different in Canada, where in a recent survey, more than 80% of respondent companies had little or no understanding of XBRL. Cross listed Canadian companies will be required to conform to the SEC requirements. They are scaling in over the next few years, but the big effect will take place when IFRS is adopted next year. Companies filing with the SEC in IFRS will be required to file in XBRL.

2009-12-27T10:06:00.001-05:00

Data in the Next Decade

There is a time for predictions or at least thinking more deeply about the future and often that time is at the beginning of a new year and especially a new decade. Technology News has come up with some predictions about the "tens" which contain the following:

"As we move through our lives, we'll leave more and more digital detritus. Some of it will resemble what we share online today. Some will be emitted quietly by devices, just as mobile phones can signal their location.
We'll also have access to more data about the world around us, dwarfing the real-time stock quotes, government statistics, scientific databases and other information stores available today.

In the next decade as conjured by Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey, all that information will be available instantaneously, anywhere. He imagines spotting an acquaintance at a conference and having at his fingertips links to the person's most recent research, plus a reminder of her husband's name."

This is dead on in terms of existing trends and the logical course of events as we move forward into the next decade. Companies are moving to cloud computing. Computing capacity will grow exponentially because of this fact. The capacity for handling data, raw and otherwise, will also grow tremendously. New technologies for adding context to that data, such as XBRL, will come into their own. People will rely on selecting relevant data and running analytics against it rather than poring over prepared reports. The behavioural implications of this trend are most intriguing.

Analysts, investors and others will become accustomed to drawing upon the data they find most relevant to their decision making needs. Over time, they will develop customized analyses and simply refresh those analyses with fresh data when they need to review their decisions.

Over the next decade, the growth in the power of information systems will be remarkable, but the behavioural changes prompted by that growth will be even more so. Check out the predictions by Technology Newsworld.

2009-12-16T08:44:00.000-05:00

IASC Foundation publishes 2010 architecture for the IFRS and IFRS for SMEs Taxonomies

On December 9, 2009, the IASC Foundation issued a release to announce that "the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC) Foundation published The IFRS Taxonomy 2010 Architecture Draft for public comment. It also published a project summary and feedback statement on Architectural improvements to the IFRS Taxonomy. The feedback statement summarises the architectural improvements that will be implemented in the next release of the IFRS Taxonomy in 2010 as a result of consultations in July 2009.

"The IFRS Taxonomy 2010 Architecture Draft documents in detail the XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) architecture of the IFRS Taxonomy 2010, including the IFRS for Small and Medium-sized Entities (SMEs) Taxonomy. It explains the design rationale of the IFRS Taxonomy architecture, how the architecture satisfies the requirements of the Taxonomy, and the use of axes (dimensions), taxonomy modularisation, taxonomy framework, extensions framework and instantiation in the Taxonomy. It also addresses new XBRL technologies such as formulae, rendering and versioning, and the technical aspects of the IFRS Taxonomy relevant to software vendors."

2009-12-09T09:00:00.002-05:00

A Dream for XBRL
by Gerald Trites

The CICA had its annual Corporate Reporting Awards in Toronto yesterday. The Awards program has been running for almost 60 years and its an understatement to say that there has been a lot of change over those years. In 2001, the Awards program was expanded to include Electronic Disclosure - basically how companies use their websites to disclose IR information.

A consistent theme of the judges reporting on electronic disclosure has been that companies often make it difficult for users to obtain the information they want, usually by burying it within huge pdf files, that take a long time to download and search.

This year, the judges cited a CICA research study expected to be released in the spring which takes a somewhat different approach to web disclosures. As Jerry Trites, the ED judging coordinator said, the study will be taking the approach that the website should be viewed as a data mart. The data within the site is packaged largely according to packages that have evolved over a long period of time within the paper paradigm, such as financial statements, MD&A's and annual reports. We need to think of the availability of the data and question whether the traditional packages really do the job. We need to think of how that data can be repackeged to make it more useful to investors and other users. The website needs to be viewed holistically and the data availability made consistent across the site.

So here's the dream for XBRL. That the data mart be totally organized and packaged by using XBRL. That a single taxonomy be created for the presentation of website data marts that sweep in all the data that would be included on the IR section of a website. To be manageable, the architecture of such a taxonomy would likely have to incorporate by reference the existing financial statement taxonomies. This is an issue that could be handled by the technical XBRL gurus without great difficulty.

An XBRL reader would be included in the website so that the users would not have to look at XML style instance documents and this reader would be used to assemble the data the users want.

The advantages of this Website taxonomy would be impressive. IT would enable instant access to all the details in the IR Section of a website, even within the notes to the financial statements. The information could be compared internally and with other companies.

Most importantly, the users would not have to dig through annual reports and big pdf documents to find the information they want. Why don't we do that?

2009-11-30T09:55:00.000-05:00

How to Avoid Common Errors in SEC Filings

The SEC filings are coming in and there has been some opportunity to analyze them. Charles Hoffman has posted a new entry on his blog that provides a summary of the most common errors and how to avoid them. Take a look.

2009-11-24T08:25:00.001-05:00

Bowne & Co

XBRL Canada has several members with world class skills and experience with XBRL regulatory filings. Bowne & Co is one of those members.

This article represents the first in a series featuring individual XBRL members. The intent is to provide some idea of the kind of help that is available for companies that are faced with the prospect of needing to file in XBRL this year or over the next few years.

Bowne & Co got into the XBRL world early and was the first to file with the SEC Voluntary program when it started. They offer XBRL filing and consulting services and their website contains a useful introduction to XBRL as well as a repository of a number of useful tools. For example, the site contains a free Interactive XBRL Viewer, which will enable companies to upload their filings and then view them as they will appear on the SEC site. Their Compliance Driver is an automated external reporting solution that simplifies the creation of compliance documents, integrates XBRL tagging and IFRS conversion into the process and reduces the risks that often occur with external reporting.

A corporate blog, managed by renowned XBRL expert Rob Blake, sets out some of the latest events on XBRL including notice of the many webinars held by Bowne.

Keep an eye out for future articles on XBRL Canada members.

2009-11-17T08:36:00.000-05:00

Learning About XBRL

Want to learn a bit about XBRL? Try some of these sites:

KPMG offers a good tutorial on the basics
Bowne & Co has another one online that emphasizes preparing good regulatory filings
RR Donnelley and Edgar Online have put up another excellent site on SEC Filings called Try XBRL.
The Journal of Accountancy has an online tagging tutorial using slides on tagging XBRL documents.
To learn about rendering, try this slide deck from XBRL International
For the more technically minded, try this on the XBRL Specification
And for numerous links to articles and educational materials on XBRL, try this site from Bryant University.

Happy Learning

2009-11-09T07:42:00.002-05:00

How Not to Lose the Momentum
by Gerald Trites

This year, in Canada, XBRL has been pushed to the sidelines until IFRS implementation is complete. This is unfortunate because it will put us further behind other countries than we already are. There is increasing evidence that global capital markets are embracing XBRL and that countries like Canada, because of the importance of information availability, will be at an increasing disadvantage in raising capital in those markets.

It is also unfortunate because it is based on the mistaken belief that XBRL implementation is a project that is, or almost is, as big as IFRS implementation. This is simply wrong. The two are not even in the same league. IFRS implementation for many, if not most, companies is a massive project. XBRL implementation by comparison is small. David Blazskouske, Director of the Office of Interactive Data for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) spoke last week at the XBRL Canada Annual Conference. He, along with others having experience with regulatory filings, pointed out that XBRL implementations are not large projects, that they consume resources measured in weeks, unlike IFRS projects which take larger teams many, many months. Usually XBRL projects only require a small team of accountants to implement and with minimal training.

Because Canadian companies are immersed in IFRS convergence, they have their teams in place. It is interesting to note that the teams required to implement IFRS are similar in composition to those required for XBRL - accountants. We have written before of the advantages to companies of implementing IFRS and XBRL at the same time. The similarity in accounting skills required simply means economies of scale in making good use of those teams. If management does not wish to take this approach, then the next best approach is to retain the accounting team that was built for IFRS and use that team, with perhaps a bit of tweaking, to implement XBRL. This way, the momentum gained through IFRS implementation can be transported into the project to implement XBRL. It's a project that will need to be done in any event - we know that - and the core of a good XBRL implementation team is already in place. So why not use it?

The presentations for the XBRL Annual Conference are on the XBRL Canada website.

2009-11-06T07:10:00.000-05:00

Annual XBRL Canada Conference

The annual conference was held yesterday in Toronto and it was a successful and high quality event. An interested audience posed good questions to the panellists, leading to some stimulating discussion. The presentations are now on the XBRL Canada website and are available for download.

2009-11-05T18:18:00.002-05:00

Thompson Reuters files in XBRL

Thompson Reuters Corporation has filed their interim financials on SEDAR in XBRL. The company filed their unaudited consolidated financial statements for the period ended June 30, 2009 in XBRL under the Canadian Securities Administrators’ Voluntary Filing Program. They filed using the 2009 IFRS taxonomy. They are the largest company to file under the voluntary program to date and also the first to file using IFRS. The XBRL files can be viewed at this link.

2009-10-21T09:46:00.000-04:00

Paul Cherry, Chair of the International Accounting Standards Board, is to speak on IFRS Convergence at the XBRL Canada Annual Conference in Toronto. Other speakers will include David Blazkouske of the SEC, Andrew Lowe of the OSC and several vendors and exhibitors. The theme of the conference is to provide regulatory filers and potential filers with an up-to-date status report and concrete help in getting organized for the adoption of IFRS and XBRL.

The conference will take place at the Toronto Convention Center on November 5 beginning at 9AM. For the full agenda and registration details, please go to www.xbrl.ca.

2009-10-16T13:52:00.001-04:00

Annual Conference – XBRL Canada

November 5, 2009, Toronto Convention Center

FOR THE AGENDA AND TO REGISTER PLEASE GO TO WWW.XBRL.CA

SPEAKERS FROM THE SEC, CSA, IASB, XBRL INTERNATIONAL AND A VARIETY OF VENDORS OF XBRL SOLUTIONS.

A PRACTICAL EVENT THAT WILL HELP FILERS DECIDE ON AN APPROACH TO FILING WITH REGULATORS.

2009-10-13T09:31:00.002-04:00

Canada's new Chief Information Officer

Ms Corinne Charette has been named CIO for Canada. "In this role she is responsible for establishing strategies, directions and policy for the Government in the areas of Information Technology, Information Management, Security, Privacy and Access to Information." The role includes a mandate for improving the transparency of information.

In a related article, it was pointed out that Canada has lost ground since the 1990s as a leader in information technology in government. At one time, the eGovernment program was lauded around the world as a model of government usage of technology, particularly the internet, for making services available online to all Canadians.

Now we are lagging noticeably behind in the adoption of new technologies. XBRL is a notable example. Many other countries in the world have adopted XBRL as a means to improve transparency of information and improve the efficiency with which information can be moved around and made available in forms that are far more useful than the old printed form methods. The Netherlands, Australia, Britain, and much of Europe has adopted XBRL in one way or another towards this end. As a result, their information can be made available freely and easily across platforms within government departments and to the public.

The old ways of handling information are not good enough any more. One hopes that Ms Chartette seizes the opportunity she has in her new role to bring about change - change that will usher in a new era of information availability, mobility and transparency.

2009-10-07T16:29:00.000-04:00

XBRL Canada Annual Meeting
Toronto November 5, 2009

A national press release has just been issued to announce the forthcoming XBRL event to be held in Toronto on November 5. See the press release here. Further details will be coming out shortly.

2009-09-18T07:12:00.003-04:00

Reserve this Date

November 5, 2009

Toronto Convention Center

XBRL Canada will be holding a major event focused on the needs of regulatory filers on November 5 in Toronto.

The event will feature a number of vendors who will demonstrate their products and be available to discuss approaches to filing. Prominent speakers will also discuss Canadian and US regulatory requirements. Further details will be announced soon.

Registrations will be limited so it is advisable to get yours in early by sending an email to lucia.ng@cica.ca.

Vendors who wish to participate should contact Jerry Trites at gtrites@zorba.ca. Cost of vendor participation will be $1000 for members and $2500 for non-members. Participants will be featured as event sponsors and will be able to set up booths and banners and make a presentation to the audience.

XBRL Canada is sponsored by the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants.

2009-09-12T07:12:00.002-04:00

Improving Access to Government Data on the Web
By Diane Mueller

On September 4th, the President took another important step toward a more open and transparent government by announcing a new policy to voluntarily disclose White House visitor access records. Aside from a small group of appointments that cannot be disclosed because of their necessarily confidential nature, the record of every visitor who comes to the White House for an appointment, a tour or to conduct business will be released. As historic as the President’s announcement is, it is also a good illustration of what is missing from the administration’s technology infrastructure plan — a coordinated approach to providing data standards.

On the surface, this new disclosure of visitor data looks perfectly fine. The data made available in a simple Comma Separated Values (.csv) file is easily downloaded and opened into a spreadsheet for viewing purposes.

Take a step beyond simple viewing, and try to mash up this content to see where the visitor’s list collides with other interest groups and data sources — you begin to get an idea of the complex nature of data mapping. For example, think of mashing up this visitor information with the U.S. SEC filings that include the names and remuneration of executives of publicly traded companies tagged in XBRL.

Better yet, simply try to blog about someone’s visit to the White House and reference a snippet from the .csv content. Then go to Twitter and post a tweet with a link to your blog so you can have bragging rights about being the first to notice some VIP’s visit. If I then repost the information on my blog and one of my readers wants to get back to the source file to verify the facts without some form of metadata and URI associated with the content, there is no path back to the original source. Therefore, there is no validation that the information is accurate. When I repost your information on my blog, I am simply trusting your cutting and pasting skills and trusting that you accurately interpreted the information. This can be a potentially dangerous situation that often leads to a lot of misinformed “noise.”

So far, in the marriage of social networks and open government, there has been a lot of “noise” coming in, but there has been very little done in the way of creating constructive solutions for accurate and trusted citizen participation.

Without the metadata about the newly disclosed visitor content or any other government information, the accuracy with which data is interpreted is jeopardized with each reuse. Without a link back to the source, the authenticity of the content is no longer discoverable. Without this information, it’s all just more “noise” on the web.

Where Does XML Fit in?

XML industry standards bring metadata to the content. Even a simple XML schema and an instance document would have gone a long way to ensure that, regardless of what tool consumed the visitor data (including spreadsheets), the information would always be interpreted in the same manner. Furthermore, the use of an XML industry standard for identity would enable one to leverage existing tools to mash up the content with other data sources. The key benefit of XML is that consuming applications no longer requires someone to reinvent clever ways of mapping and representing complex data, so developers can expend their energies on solving higher level problems that have a greater return.

There are plenty of other examples across federal, state and municipal government agencies that build the case for leveraging XML industry standards to aid in creating greater transparency and to create efficiencies for the agencies themselves.

Where Do We Go from Here?

Recovery.gov and multiple other individual government agency projects have taken strides forward to granting the public access to government data. However, cross-agency conversations are still taking place to get some agreement on common data models for comparing and mashing up information from multiple data sources accurately.

Efforts such as the NIEM XBRL harmonization discussions should be applauded as this combined effort should aid in the accurate mapping of government financial data across agencies. There is still a long way to go before we can start to leverage the really interesting technologies like Resource Description Framework (RDF) and the Semantic Web.

While everyone wants to jump on the Web 2.0 bandwagon, designing the technology infrastructure to ensure that it is done in an open, transparent and accurate manner requires a lot of cross-agency collaboration. The administration’s goal should be to ensure that the public can collaborate on the analysis and dissemination of public information across the web in a manner that can be trusted, authenticated and redistributed without imposing a cost burden on the consumers or the producers of that information. That is no small task.

This all leaves me wondering if I am guessing correctly about what was being talked about in the White House on 7/14/2009 at 3:00:00PM and about who was in the room. If my assumptions are right — loosely based on about 22,200 Google hits for Stephen J. Hemsley, who was listed as visiting Aneesh Chopra, for whom there are about 1,170,000 Google hits — I’m guessing a lot of these same data topics were addressed with a slight healthcare twist. But then again, I’m doing the interpretations here and making the free associations, so you’ll just have to trust me.

To add your input to the conversation about improving data access on the web, join us at the Workshop on Improving Access to Financial Data on the Web on October 5-6, 2009, in Arlington, VA, that is co-organized by W3C and XBRL International, Inc. and hosted by the FDIC.

###

Diane Mueller has been actively involved in the development efforts of the XBRL standard for the past decade. She is the Canadian representative to the XBRL International Steering Committee, serves as vice chair of that body, and chairs the XBRL Working Groups on Rendering and Software Interoperability. She currently serves as vice president of XBRL development at JustSystems, the largest independent software vendor in Japan and a worldwide leader in XML and information management technologies. Learn more about JustSystems at http://www.justsystems.com, and contact Diane at diane@justsystems.com. You may also follow Diane on Twitter at @XBRLspy.

2009-08-27T06:43:00.003-04:00

Financial Reporting in Flux
by Gerald Trites, FCA

Financial reporting has been undergoing a process of change for several years. At one time, the focus was on the financial statements, and much else that was reported was an offshoot of the statements. Accountants spent much of their time preparing these financial statements for "general use" in accordance with "generally accepted accounting principles." That still happens of course, but there has been a lot more going on as well.

Companies have been expanding the types of data they present to stakeholders. A research study published by the CICA last year identified more than 50 types of information presented by companies, of which the financial statements is only one type. The rest of it consists of major items like the MD&A and less extensive items like the President's Report.

What's more, the data is being presented much more often. Where it was originally presented annually, then quarterly, now there is a constant flow of information. The central vehicle for presenting this information has become the corporate website.

Add to this the idea that companies have been organizing their data through the use of ERP systems and integration software and you have a scenario that is going to evolve more quickly than many of us imagine.

Companies will be called upon the make available increasing quantities of their data to the public directly from their systems on a real time basis. That is the trend. companies will deny it and resist it, but it is bound to happen through the demands of stakeholders.

The implications of this are tremendous, not the least of which are issues around establishing data integrity and obtaining independent assurance. But it does mean that there will be a need for a standard with which the data can be presented and used. Filling this need is when XBRL will achieve a new level of usefulness. Indeed, that is a role in which XBRL will be able to achieve its full potential.

2009-08-24T13:07:00.002-04:00

Why XBRL?
by Gerald Trites, FCA

There are still questions being raised by knowledgable people asking why we are getting into XBRL and what the value is of it. A vast quantity of material has been written about this topic, and yet it seems that there is still a need for more. This post is a modest attempt to explain why XBRL is not only desirable, but necessary.

Data is at the core of business activity. Everyone in or connected to business activity understands this fully. Managements spend much of their time digesting and acting on data. Investors need relevant and accurate data in order to make their decisions. Regulators need data to enable them to understand whether their charges are behaving within the ambit of the applicable rules and regulations.

Also, it is no secret that in recent years, the volume of data that these people need to cope with has expanded tremendously. Annual reports, for example, which once were a couple dozen or so pages have grown to hundreds of pages. And the Annual Reports have become only a small part of the data that is made available to investors. Notes to financial statements are becoming legendary in terms of their volume and complexity.

Investors, managements, analysts and regulators all need to try to understand all this data. They certainly have their work cut out for them.

It was this growing volume of data, combined with the effects of the Sarbanes Oxley act that prompted the SEC to require XBRL. They knew that to do a proper job of handling and analyzing all this data would require hiring large numbers of people, and they didn’t have the budget for that. Their only alternative was to find a technology solution.

XBRL was a solution because it enables data to be transferred from a source system to a destination system without human intervention. What’s more, the XBRL tags contain a lot of data about that data (metadata) which enables the receiving system to perform a lot of analysis, again, without human intervention. That leaves the humans with the ability to budget their time to spend on the most important areas, the ones that need the most attention. In addition – a real bonus, the XBRL data is formatted in accordance with internationally recognized standards, which make it easy to ensure the sending and receiving systems are compatible.

For investors and analysts, the present system involves obtaining data and inputting or importing it into spreadsheets and then trying to format it into some form that might be useful. Everyone knows that manually inputting data is inefficient and error prone. Then they need to call the company and ask questions about the numbers they have laboured on, many of which would have been answered automatically by the XBRL metadata.

With XBRL, they can save a great deal of time even with conventional spreadsheets. The software industry has been working on some tools that they can use that will be even better, although they have been slow. But they are coming. Better analyst coverage means better investment decisions, and lower cost of capital.

So why XBRL? It automates many things that are presently being done manually, but that are no longer feasible with the vast amount of data that must be handled. That’s not just something that is nice to have, it’s something that is absolutely essential.