Written by Bob Schneider Posted on November 6, 2010
It was a busy October (and early November) in the XBRL sphere, with management changes and new initiatives among other significant developments. I’ve llected and summarized these items below, along with (what I hope are) useful links. Please let me know if I’ve left out anything of importance.
Leadership
(1) With the Republican takeover of the US House of Representatives, Rep. Darrell Issa will assume the chair of the House mittee on Oversight and ernment Reform. Mr. Issa is expected to “reinvigorate the mittee by embracing new technologies for analyzing and disseminating ernment data,” among which, given his past support, will surely be XBRL. Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, Kim Wallin -- well-known for championing XBRL in Nevada -- was re-elected State ptroller. Interactive data seems to be one issue on which there can be bipartisan agreement.
(2) In more specialized elections, new members were chosen for the Steering mittee of XBRL International. Arleen Thomas of the AICPA is the new Chair; David G. van den Ende of Deloitte herlands was elected 2nd Vice Chair. Five at-large members were also elected: Li Dan, China Ministry of Finance; John Turner, reFiling; Caetano Nobre, MZ nsult S.A.; Shiping Liu, Global Business Intelligence nsulting rporation (GBI); and Avinash Chander, The Institute of Chartered Acuntants of India (ICAI). [Press Release]
(3) This week Campbell Pryde, Chief Standards Officer of XBRL US, was named its President and CEO. He sueeds Mark Bolgiano, who headed the anization for the past four years. Effective December 1, Mr. Bolgiano will lead technology strategy at Howard Hughes Medical Institute. [Press Release)
Initiatives
(4) The XBRL International Standards Board (XSB) released Preserve. Promote. Participate, which details six initiatives to ensure XBRL meets future business requirements. As discussed on this blog, priority was given to the initiative to build an abstract business model. Acrdingly, the XSB has launched the Abstract Modeling Group, which will use the Object Management Group’s (OMG) Unified Modeling Language (UML) to create the model.
(5) XBRL US has created a 17-member Best Practices mittee to focus on data quality. “The mittee is charged with identifying and reaching agreement on best practices in the creation of XBRL-formatted financial statements from public panies reporting to the Securities and Exchange mission (SEC).” The list of members is in the press release.
(6) Following the news in September that Citi would begin working with XBRL US, DT, and SWIFT on testing tagging of rporate actions, it was announced in October that GlobeTax and XSP would join the pilot program. [Press Release]
M&A
(7) Clarity Systems, which provides XBRL products and services for SEC filing panies, has been acquired by IBM. Here’s the press release and a variety of mentary from Forbes, TEC, and Miles Jennings at Seeking Alpha.
Guidance
(8) At the 21st XBRL nference held in Beijing, China’s Ministry of Finance released the General Purpose XBRL Taxonomy. The taxonomy will be used across a wide array of ernment agencies, including those with responsibilities for industry, banking, securities, and insurance. [XBRL. Press Release]
(9) The Interoperable Taxonomy Architecture (ITA) project announced publication of the Global Filing Manual, which aligns XBRL filing rules on a worldwide basis. The GFM provides guidance on preparation, filing, and validation of XBRL filings created using the IFRS, EDI (Japan), and US GAAP taxonomies
(10) The SEC published Staff Review Observations from their review of XBRL filings submitted in the June to August period.
Articles
(11) CFO. reported that XBRL US had identified 18,695 errors in the 3,400 filings that have been submitted in years 1 and 2 of the SEC mandate. Despite the seemingly high number, most observers noted that the total was actually fewer than had been expected and represented a small portion of the more than 1.6 million tagged facts. Moreover, about two-thirds of the errors were the oft-cited mistake of a negative value for an element expected to have a positive value.
(12) Also worth reading are Mike Willis’s article on supply chain standardization, Daniel Roberts’s post Is XBRL Like Blood?, and this piece from Semanticweb. on the work of Dr. Graham Rong.
