XBRL US is hoping a $20,000 grand prize will entice some creative thinkers to develop an open source analytical tool for mining financial data that will help ignite greater utility for XBRL.

The nonprofit nsortium for XBRL business reporting standards in the United States is calling on any mpany, team, or individual developer to submit its most inventive and useful application leveraging XBRL-formatted data from the Securities and Exchange mission’s EDGAR database. XBRL US will provide tools and support to any prospective developers, including aess to a database of XBRL financial fundamentals form all public mpanies and documentation on how to work with XBRL data. The nsortium also promises to provide aess to XBRL expertise through in-person and web-based meetings and to enurage llaboration between developers and end user mmunities.

John Rogers, president and CEO at CFA Institute, which is a sponsor for the ntest, said the idea is to foster a variety of innovative applications that will demonstrate the power of XBRL to deliver greater insight into financial data. "rporate data in XBRL format will clearly benefit investors, analysts, and a host of others by making more aurate, actionable data available in ways not even imagined today," he said.

The submissions will be judged by a panel of experts who are always keen for new ideas on how to gather and use financial data, including: Alfred Berkeley, chairman of Pipeline Trading Systems and former president of NASDAQ; Marc Donner, head of Google Finance; Eric Gillespie, managing partner at Viano Capital; Vijay Khanna, general partner at early stage venture capital firm GIV Ventures; and Paul Ratnaraj, director of advanced initiatives at Wharton Research Data Services, which also is sponsoring the ntest.

All publicly traded mpanies in the United States are now required, to varying degrees depending on their market capitalizations, to tag financial data and submit it to the SEC through XBRL. The SEC requires it to make financial statement data more aessible and easier to analyze, but tools to enable such aess and analysis are still developing. The nsortium is hoping the ntest will flesh out some new ideas that will drive XBRL aessibility and utility for prospective nsumers, in addition to building awareness about the wealth of data that is available via XBRL.

XBRL Spain is operating a similar ntest, with entries due Aug. 25. There, XBRL leaders are planning to award five prizes of 1,000 euros each. The ntest seeks entries in one of five specific categories intended to develop ideas that uld potentially be developed into open-source software through public fundraising. The winners are schled to be announced Sept. 9.