BIG transparency news
Thursday, October 23rd, 2008 By Mike Maurer
State Auditor Mary Taylor deserves some serious kudos for this effort, which so far as I can tell, has not yet been remarked by any of the state’s news leaders: “Taylor will convene a workgroup to study the potential implementation of XBRL in Ohio. The workgroup will consist of local government officials, certified public accountants and business professionals.”
Unfortunately, anything to do with numbers, accountants, and, Lord help them, CPAs tends to induce some serious snooze-condition. But this stuff is big.
One of the keys to transparency today is the Internet, and for now the lingua franca of the Internet is XML. XBRL is an XML adaptation. Even if that’s gibberish to you, here are the two important things to know about that: (1) it’s “open” source, which means anyone, anywhere can read it and adapt it, and (2) it’s machine readable.
These two things together allow both public access and creativity. All these Internet billionaires that we read about some three to six times a year are becoming billionaires because they are finding hidden value in ways to reformat information. Opening up data in a standard, accessible format, is big, big, big.
Congratulations to Auditor Taylor for recognizing this and promoting it.
Anyone who is inclined to explore this in further detail can find more information at a site dedicated to the topic, http://www.xbrl.org/Home/.
