XBRL Frequently Asked Questions
Why do we need Extensible Business Reporting Language?
Government regulators world wide face a dilemma. There are pressures to improve regulatory reporting, and manage the associated risks, while minimising requests for data that pose a significant compliance burden on businesses. To address these challenges regulators are increasingly looking for ways to improve data capture and reporting processes as well as to improve timeliness, accuracy and relevance of the reports they issue. Many regulators are turning towards the World Wide Web for solutions.
Failure to analyse information gathering and make necessary improvements can leave organisations and the industries they regulate open to serious new risks. Information can become stale, old or not used.
Six principles of information design can help organisations achieve a balanced, 'desired programme' of sustainable and relevant information collection without imposing undue provider burden. These principles are:
- Timely - To be useful, information needs to be acted upon within a reasonably short period from the time of measurement. The 'rear view mirror' view of any qualitative measure is only useful where the information is current - and currency rapidly fades.
- Accurate - Information should be confirmed as free of anomalies and errors, prior to manipulation.
- Reasonable - Regulators should seek to minimise provider burden.
- Relevant - The definitions and interrelationships between data definitions need to be up to date and as tightly linked to information used for the running of the business as possible.
- Efficient - The cost of collecting the information needs to be proportionate to the value of the data collected.
- Transforming - Governmental information needs, change markedly, over time. Information collection may go stale over time. A requirement to provide stale information is resented and eventually ignored by users. Perhaps worse, stale information can be assumed to remain relevant by agency analysts, who quickly become out of touch with industry developments.
XBRL makes it easier for companies and governments to report, and for stakeholders and regulators to quickly access and analyse information without losing accuracy. XBRL provides a common way for information systems to exchange business reporting data.
What is the current status of XBRL in New Zealand?
XBRL in e-government is just beginning. See e-GIF XBRL Standards Working Group for details.
Can I see a sample of XBRL?
Yes. The XBRL International website has a simple example of XBRL in action. See A small example of XBRL.
