In Florida, all local governmental financial statements for fiscal years ending on or after September 1, 2022, will have to be filed in XBRL format under proposed legislation. Since the state has more than 400 municipalities, this is a major move. This will mean that government reporting will be more timely, more comparable and more suitable for analysis.

Like every other unit of government in the US, those municipalities prepare “CAFRs” or Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports in accordance with US Government Accounting Standards. Those reports are currently analog. XBRL will be a substantial improvement, particularly if they use inline XBRL, which is also readable by people as well as computers. With inline XBRL, reports will continue to be read by people who are interested but also will be fed into analytics tools for deeper analysis and decision making.

More on this here.

XBRL Canada Webinar - Digital Transformation and the need for Standardization

XBRL Canada Webinar – May 8, 2018 at 12:00 Noon Eastern

Digital Transformation and the need for Standardization

Presenter: John McAlister, of McAlister & Associates

John McAlister is a Globally known expert in digital transformation and is well known within business and financial sectors, in Australia and Internationally. He has led transformation programs that have changed the way that Australian Individuals deal with the Tax Office and how Businesses deal with each other and with government.

John is a former Assistant Commissioner and National Director of the Australian Taxation Office. In those positions, he:

• Initiated and led the Electronic Invoicing initiative, estimated to deliver savings of $10 Billion through an open digital framework.
• Managed Standard Business Reporting (SBR) which led to savings estimated at more than $1.4 billion. 
• Influenced the adoption of data and message standards for SuperStream, delivering benefits of $3.2Billion. 
• Led the development of the ATO’s e-tax system 
• Created and delivered the pre-fill initiatives and piloted the foundations of the online Tax return. 

John brings insights from more than 20 years of transformation experience in Information creation, management and distribution. Much of this at the leading edge of Information Technology and as a thought leader who has changed the way risk is understood and addressed through the use of data.

This webinar is a unique opportunity for Canadian governments and business to learn from his experience, as we move ahead with digital transformation at all levels.

The webinar is free of charge. To register, please send an email to gtrites@xbrl.ca.

Sponsored by XBRL Canada, with the support of CPA Canada.

Digital Standardization in Government

Many governments, including the Canadian Government, are digitizing their activities, including their reporting of financial and other information. This includes efforts to make available open data, in various forms, such as CSV, XML, XBRL and JSON. XBRL is used in several countries, including, notably, Australia and the Netherlands, for Standardized Business Reporting (SBR) where the government uses XBRL to communicate with its citizens and vice versa. Costs of filing are substantially reduced as a result.

In other countries, other standards are often used. XBRL International has released the Open Information Model, which provides a syntax-independent model for XBRL data, allowing reliable transformation of XBRL data into other representations. The work product includes:
- The Open Information Model (OIM): a syntax-independent definition of an XBRL report.
- xBRL-XML: mappings from the original XML-based syntax for XBRL to the OIM.
- xBRL-JSON: a standard JSON representation for XBRL data, defined in terms of the OIM.
- xBRL-CSV: a standard CSV representation for XBRL data, defined in terms of the OIM, and leveraging the W3C's standards for tabular metadata.
- OIM Common: common definitions used by other OIM-based specifications.

The State of Florida in the United States provides a good example of data standardization in action. It has more than 400 separate municipalities, including 282 cities. Like every other unit of government in that country, they  prepare “CAFRs” or Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports in accordance with US Government Accounting Standards. Those reports are analog. Given the importance of municipal bond markets to the long term funding of local and state infrastructure in the US, this seems preposterous. See the article on this by XBRL International.

However, Florida is in the last stages of finalising legislation that will require the collaborative design and implementation of XBRL based reporting from municipalities. The CAFR will go digital. An experiment, but one with a strong chance of success.

By using inline XBRL, they will be able to present financial information in web pages, which will be easy for people to read, while at the same time, those web pages will include tags that can be read by other machines and interpreted without human intervention.