In the financial sector, among many others, experts all seem to be pushing XBRL use onto the government. We’ve already looked at some of the most obvious business benefits to the language, but there is more to it than that. As it turns out, government adoption of XBRL has far-reaching benefits to the everyman business-owner. Over on the Huffington Post, crisis management specialist W. Stephenson has come up with a list of obvious benefits XBRL could bring to government offices.
Stephenson’s article is well-worth reading, as he explores a number of benefits that other XBRL writers may have overlooked. This week, we’ll look at a few of his points, and provide our responses to his opinions.
“[XBRL] could radically reduce government costs by increasing inter-agency cooperation…”
As much as we write about the efficiency of XBRL, it really can’t be stated enough times. And, in this case, the concept really includes a whole bundle of benefits. Open, standardized data and reporting means a reduction in errors, a reduction in redundancy, and a reduction in cooperation barriers. There are very few aspects of agency documentation that wouldn’t benefit from such a system.
“Reducing the cost to businesses of complying with government regulations is a key concern…”
When the Netherlands approved a Standard Business Reporting initiative in 2007, the cost of business compliance dropped 25%. A move toward more government data API’s, on a city or state level, could be a step in the right direction, and according to ‘API Evangelist’ Kin Lane, it is already happening. “All of us API and data guys have all been screaming for city, county, state and federal government to open up their data via APIs for years now,” Lane says in a recent blog. “In 2011 I would say many government officials listened, and opened up almost 100 government APIs…”
“…opening the data to the public means that individuals…can fill the gap…”
An interesting topic that Stephenson brings up is crowd-sourcing. He argues that transparent reporting could give citizens and business owners an opportunity to spot potential improvements that government employees are too busy to notice. If government data isn’t being presented in a way that is easily readable for the average business owner (if it’s being presented at all), it can be exceedingly difficult for that owner to suggest improvements to the system. With government offices reporting data in a single format, such as XBRL, we can get closer to a unified system of discussion and improvement.
“…smart officials realize that public confidence must be earned through transparency.”
At the end of the day, business owners and citizens want to know what their tax money is going toward. Published XBRL reports would make that knowledge public, which could hopefully dispel some of the public’s current mistrust.
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.
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