Digital Financial Reporting

This 2006 speech, The Interactive Data Revolution: Improved Disclosure for Investors, Less Expensive Reporting for Companies, by Chairman Christopher Cox of the SEC explains his vision for XBRL-based financial reporting.

In the speech, Cox points out that perhaps we are approaching XBRL which he calls "interactive data" from the wrong end.  Rather than taking about the "gizmos" that make it work we should be talking about the reasons interactive data will improve our lives.

It seems to me that we might be approaching this from the wrong end. Instead of talking about all the gizmos that will make markets work better and give investors better tools than they have today, we ought to be starting with the reasons that interactive data will make the lives of investors, companies, and even regulators better. Watchmakers, after all, do not sell their products by talking about tachometers and rotors. They tell you that their watches keep perfect time. You don’t have to know anything about movements to be able to tell time — and to know that it’s always better if your watch hasn’t stopped before an important appointment. With interactive data, the parts and internal movements can be daunting, but the result is to make investing easier and better for the individual and for the market as a whole.

Interactive data is a marriage made in heaven for investing and high tech.

All this distills down to flipping bits.  But, all the pieces of the puzzle need to be put together in such a way that business professionals can operate these systems without the involvement of technical professionals.  The "gizmos" for doing this need to be hidden from business professionals.

It is not only financial reporting that will benefit.  Financial reporting is just one obvious use case.