Digital Financial Reporting

The Data Coalition calls it "smart regulation". Others refer to it as "algorithmic regulation". Still others conjure up the same meaning using terms such as "robo cop".  I will use the term computational regulation which is consistent with computational law, computational audit, and computational economics.

By "computational" I mean able to be processed by a computer, a symbolic system.

So what exactly is computational regulation?  Well; rather than defining statutory and regulatory terms and rules only in documents that only humans can read and where intended meaning can be (and often is) ambiguous; terms and rules are also defined using machine-readable, machine-understandable, machine-interpretable standard formal models.

Because those standard formal models can be processed using computer software, the statutory and regulatory rules can be significantly less ambiguous so the intent of those rules is clear to those that must comply with those rules.  Because of this increased clarity compliance with rules an be tested which reduces risk of those being regulated.

And so how can these symbolic systems, this logic, be processed?  There are many different approaches (Here are details that explain exactly how).

The human imagination is incredibly powerful.  Albert Einstein pointed out, "Imagination is more important than knowledge."  Transformational moments in human history have come about when someone or some group of people were able to imagine a world the rest of us could not yet see.

XBRL International was formed in 1999 when a group of people imagined possibilities such as computational regulation.  Twenty years later far less imagination is necessary.  All the pieces are almost in place!