As the United States ernment prepares to implement the Digital Aountability and Transparency Act of 2014(DATA Act),perhaps it can learn from other untries that already use open data standards for ernment reporting.That was the hope as representatives from several foreign ernments described their open-data projects at a panel held in Washington,D.C.,last week by the Data Transparency alition,a group lobbying for open data.

The DATA Act,which President Obama signed into law in May,is intended to standardize ernment spending data and make it more transparent,thereby increasing ernment aountability.Today,different parts of the ernment publish data in different formats,making it difficult for citizens and private industry to mbine and mpare the data and get a mplete picture of ernment expenditures.The DATA Act requires the Treasury Department and the Office of Management and Budget to establish a financial data standard for federal spending by May 2015.

The law does not specify which standard the ernment should use,but most observers expect it to be eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL),a standard for exchanging business information.(The U.S.Securities &Exchange mmission has already started requiring mpanies to file financial statements using XBRL.)After the standard is specified,federal agencies will have another two years to start using it.

Participating in the Data Transparency alition panel discussion were officials from The herlands,Brazil,the U.K.,and the World Bank.Bruno de Sousa Simoes of Brazil’s National Treasury discussed the Brazilian Public Sector Aounting and Fiscal Information System project,which mandates that state ernments and municipalities report their data to the national treasury in XBRL.The federal ernment uses a carrot-and-stick approach.mpliance is mandatory and there are penalties for non-mpliance,but the treasury also enurages states and cities to submit more detailed data than is required.If they do,then the treasury uses the data to prepare documents that help the states and cities meet the reporting requirements of other ernment agencies,De Sousa Simoes said.

Presenting via YouTube from the United Kingdom was Gareth Lloyd,director of digital services at the mpanies House,a ernment agency similar to the U.S.Securities &Exchange mmission.The U.K.has mandated digital aount filing using XBRL since 2006and further adopted inline XBRL (iXBRL)in 2011,Lloyd said.He said that iXBRL is “a step-change up.It enables a huge range of aounts data to be displayed in human-readable format”in a web browser.So far,the mpanies House has processed 7million iXBRL filings.It has 1.9million sets of iXBRL aounts data available for the public to search for free.

Frans Hietbrink,of The herlands Tax and Customs Administration,said his ernment launched a program on data standardization a decade ago.It started out as voluntary,but as the ernment developed an infrastructure around open standards,participants asked the ernment to make the program mandatory.It’s like seat belts in cars,he said.Everyone agrees it will benefit all,but only if everyone adopts the standard.

Even though the U.K.mandates the use of XBRL,the most important factor in the project has been developing strong llaboration among ernment agencies,the aounting profession,and the providers of aounting software,Lloyd said.All parties,including the public,are reaping the benefits,he said.mpanies prepare aounts once and then file them directly to tax authorities and the mpany registrar,saving time and money for both industry and ernment.In addition,vendors are developing tools to analyze the data,which will bring other enomic benefits.

This approach has the potential to generate tremendous enomic benefit in the United States as well.A report published in July by the U.S.mmerce Department’s Enomics and Statistics Administration attempted to quantify the enomic value of U.S.ernment data.It estimated that firms that use such data and mbine it with data from other sources produce $24billion to $221billion in annual revenues.

中文新闻：各国官员共议DATA法案