XBRL: One key to the future of government transparency

The Obama Administration has made unprecedented promises of openness and transparency in government. One of the keys to realizing that promise may lay in a computer machine language already in use by two federal financial regulatory agencies. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is making use of eXtensible Business Reporting Language to process some reports now filed by very large banks. Similarly, the Securities and Exchange Commission is in the midst of a pilot program requiring small to medium corporation to submit their financials in electronic format, with the tags of XBRL included in the data.

Read More