Standard Thesaurus for Financial Accounting, Reporting, Auditing, and Analysis
Saturday, July 17, 2021 at 08:41AM
Charlie in Digital Financial Reporting, Knowledge Graphs

I was reading through The Knowledge Graph Cookbook: Recipes that Work (which mentions XBRL on page 108) and that book mentioned the STW Thesaurus for Economics. That resource is managed under the umbrella of the International Society of Knowledge Organization (ISKO). You can have a look at the machine-readable and human-readable of the Thesaurus for Economics here. Also, you might want to have a look at the Finaicial Industry Business Ontology (FIBO).

Folks, what needs to exist is an industry managed Standard Thesaurus for Financial Accounting, Reporting, Auditing, and Analysis!  Professional knowledge engineers need to be engaged to help create this.  Accountants need to learn how to effectively communicate with knowledge engineers.

This information would provide a good starting point: 

 The institution of accountancy really needs to stop messing around and get with the program.  This should not be an academic exercise, it should be an industry driven initiative. We should start with US GAAP and IFRS, but also consider other financial reporting schemes. This initiative should not be driven by standards setters and regulators.  Yes, they should play a part but they should just be one of the groups around the table.

The root of the knowledge graph is the double entry accounting model, the accounting equation, and the fundamental accounting concepts.

That standard thesaurus can be used to construct things like the accounting oracle.

Anyone interested in participating please contact me.

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