Digital Financial Reporting

The Data Transparency Coalition has been working to get The Digital Accountability and Transparency Act, or The DATA Act, passed by congress.  They have achieve that goal with both the house and senate passing the bill unanimously. President Obama is highly likely to sign this bill into law.

"Agencies usually do not and cannot tell us how much taxpayer money has been spent on any given program," said Rep. Issa on the House floor shortly before securing the bill's passage. "The American people deserve to know if their taxpayer dollars are being wasted or whether they are being spent wisely."

The next step is implementing this idea correctly, making The Data Act work for the taxpayers.  It needs to work significantly better than SEC XBRL financial filings.  From what I can tell, this is what it takes to make this digital reporting work correctly.  I hope those implementing The Data Act learn from the mistakes of the SEC rather then repeat those same mistakes.

While XBRL is in the running for the global standard format to use, there is competition. The Government Linked Data (GLD) Working Group got started a number of years ago. They have a Data Cube Vocabulary specification. Truth be known, syntax does not matter.  Each syntax has its pros and cons.  Digital business reporting is coming!

Nice work Data Transparency Coalition!