“I’ve heard nothing in early discussions about the so-called supercommittee charged with finding more than $1 trillion in budget cuts to indicate that it is considering structural changes in how the government operates,” says W. David Stephenson of Stephenson Strategies. “That’s a terrible omission.”
In a lengthy commentary on Federal Computer Week, Stephenson explains that the Federal Government’s reporting systems are too antiquated to properly function.
There’s little hope for long-term savings if we continue to run the government using obsolete 20th-century methods. That’s why the final package of cuts should include a management plan that builds on the proposals by the GOP and the Obama administration to radically alter the way government agencies report on their operations and process information from corporations.
XBRL is one such solution.
XBRL, in its most basic essence, is a method to preserve the context of given pieces of financial data. This allows that data to move seamlessly from one form to another, preventing the need for it to be entered over and over again, costing time and money.
It would let employees better coordinate with suppliers and customers to improve efficiency and earn public confidence through transparency…In addition, regulatory reports could be generated automatically from that same data, which would achieve the Republican goal of cutting regulatory compliance costs.
An XBRL-based reporting system is already in use in Australia and the Netherlands, according to Stephenson, allowing businesses to file a single XBRL report which is automatically filtered through to relevant agencies. Because American businesses are already filing XBRL reports with the SEC, it seems obvious that government adoption of the system would be the best step for financial transparency.
Merrill Corporation is proud to offer XBRL Complete, a suite of services that meets - and has options to exceed – the mandated requirements for XBRL for mutual funds. For more information, please click here or call 866-367-9110.
No comments:
Post a Comment