Digital Financial Reporting

The document, Proving Financial Reports are Properly Functioning Logical Systems, walks you through a reliable, systematic approach to creating high-quality, high-resolution XBRL-based machine-readable general purpose and special purpose financial statements.

“An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.  Truth stands, even if there be no public support.  It is self sustained.”

Mahatma Gandhi

With out a doubt, epic change is just around the corner.  Are you ready?

So why is this document important?

An excellent HL7 presentation helped me understand that you have to have three things to effectively exchange information: technical interoperability, semantic interoperability, and workflow interoperability. Interoperability is controlled using rules.

But what exactly are the rules that you need?  Technical interoperability of XBRL seemed to be working.  XBRL technical syntax had a conformance suite, everthing seemed fine there.  But how to you achieve semantic interoperability, exactly what rules are necessary.

I spent several years looking into OWL hoping that it could help me understand what was necessary.  During that experimentation I ran across something called Common Logic. While looking into common logic I ran across the Helsinki principles which stated:

• Any meaningful exchange of utterances depends upon the prior existence of an agreed set of semantic and syntactic rules
• The recipients of the utterances must use only these rules to interpret the received utterances, if it is to mean the same as that which was meant by the utterer

So, the Helsinki principles concur with what HL7 was saying; but I still could not figure out WHAT rules were necessary.

I ran across the ontology spectrum which helped me understand the power of different means of expressing information, the notion of ontology-like things which tuned that understanding, the components of an ontology, and then I started noticing patterns in ontology-like things.

That lead to a sound understand of the parts of a logical system and how to represent those parts. Then, an ontology engineering book that I read helped me understand how to prove that a logical system was properly functioning and the notions of consistency, precision, and completeness.

From there I started noticing patterns and started to understand that when you moved from LEFT to RIGHT in the ontology spectrum you get additional functionality.  But you have to control that functionality.  Basically, with flexibility comes responsibility.

And so, the categories or patterns of impediments documented in the PDF are exactly what I have been looking for.

What I will do is explain the increments as you move LEFT to RIGHT in the ontology spectrum and that will help you understand exactly what rules are necessary and why.  For example, if you only have a list of terms you don't need to concern yourself with associations. But, when you move from having a list to having a taxonomy and therefore having associations; you have to control the associations if people can move them around.