A law now pending in Congress could be just the impetus needed to expand the use of a powerful web technology that makes possible better management and display of huge datasets of financial information.

XBRL, Extensible Business Reporting Language, is a "markup" language for the worldwide web, similar to "HTML", or hypertext markup language, that consists of machine-readable "tags". In the case of XBRL, the tags allow for that information to be displayed in many different ways, on many different platforms and devices (personal computers, personal digital assistants. etc.) regardless of operating system.

Joe Kull with the Washington Federal Practice of Price Waterhouse Coopers, and a former top official with the Office of Management and Budget, likens XBRL to "barcoding. Basically, what XBRL does is it uses standard tags that can be used by systems that have been programmed to use the tags. What we're doing here is putting these tags around data so that they can move, and be used by any system, and the beauty here is that it's system independent, it becomes totally interactive, and it moves from data that's locked in a system, or system-centric, to one that is more consumer-centric, where the consumer defines the kind of information they want, and the system provides it."

Since our last update one year ago, only two Federal agencies so far continue to lead the government in the use of XBRL. For the past three years, the Securities and Exchange Commission has required quarterly and annual financial reports and financial disclosures submitted by public companies to be tagged with XBRL data tags. Mutual funds are the most recent addition to the phased-in compliance schedule, with all companies required to comply in 2014.

Along with the SEC, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the FDIC, is also requiring the embedding of XBRL tags in quarterly and annual data submissions.

reports that representatives from the Obama Administration and Congress are discussing XBRL in the context of the House-passed version of Senate Bill 303 - designed to beef up the "" website. In particular, this version of the bill contains a stipulation that a uniform standard be used to make it easier for members of the public to scrutinize the data from . The law doesn't specify what the standard should be, but the criteria specified are currently met by the XBRL standard. Information management specialists think that agencies might have to spend between $50,000 and $100,000 dollars to be compliant with, and standardize on XBRL. Negotiators are reportedly seeking to resolve differences between the House and Senate versions of the bill.

Meanwhile, we posed the question about the current adoption of XBRL to the Office of Management and Budget's top financial management officer -- Danny Werfel, the Comptroller for OMB -- during the recent Association of Government Accountants Leadership Breakfast.

Werfel is known to be a big fan of XBRL, but says challenges remain when it comes to its adoption in the Federal space.

The way I approach it, and have collective agreement among the key leaders among leaders at Treasury, OMB, and other critical parties that are thinking about this, is that XBRL is the second question to ask.

We haven't answered the first question yet, and the first question is, do we have a data structure in place, the taxonomy, the environment, in which we can effectively tag data and leverage the use of these tools? What we want to do is create options that allow us to be more efficient and more agile with our data. And so one of the analogies that has been shared with me, and which resonates with me, is "are we cable-ready, with our data, in order to leverage these solutions?" Whether it's XML (extensible markup language), XBRL, or some other tagging solution that's out there, or is coming up out there. The answer is, we are not "cable-ready" yet in the government. We need to make sure that the data that we have has the right taxonomy, the right structure that will enable more effective datatagging going forward. I agree that this is critical, to our success, and in particular, to leveraging cloud technology, that the cloud is most effective if you can get the data, using payments or payables as an example. Treasury is already making the payment on behalf of the federal agencies in most circumstances, they're cutting the check, and they're getting data from the agency to make that payment. Potentially, they could get more data from the agency that can potentially help the Treasury to do more to help the agency. You can envision Treasury helping the agency do its report, because they have the centralized area for the reporting of that data.

Werfel went on to say making the data generated by agency financial offices compatible with XBRL coding is a big priority, and part of the bigger picture of modernizing financial management systems all across the federal government.