Crowd Sourced Legislative Tracking for Crowd Sourced XBRL Disclosure
Update: CBO has published its cost estimate for H.R. 2392.
Bipartisan legislation to make XBRL the standard for disclosure to the U.S. government has been approved in committee and reported to the full House of Representatives for consideration. Here’s the widget to track it from opencongress.org:
Go to the bill on the opencongress.org Web site to comment and cast your vote. Wow, how subversive is this? Analyzing legislation used to be my job — I was a legislative assistant once. Bringing labor-saving technology to banking and securities regulation is one thing, but making L.A.’s on the Hill redundant? What hath sunlight wrought? And what further damage will be done when XBRL makes more government information more transparent?
Note: If you’re wondering how XBRL disclosure is crowd sourced, visit this site for one example. In the case of U.S. GAAP, anyone with an Internet connection and an interest was invited to help decide what data should be tagged.
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On Thursday, Dec. 10, 2009, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee unanimously approved S. 303, a bill to improve the administration of federal grants. (The Senate previously approved S. 303.) In doing so, the House Committee added the language of H.R. 2392, which it previously approved unanimously.
While the bill does not mandate XBRL specifically, it sets forth a series of criteria that only XBRL now meets. Just as corporations are now voluntarily adopting XBRL to provide for more accurate and reliable data reporting — a new interview with new insight was published just today at http://hitachidatainteractive.com/2009/12/09/xbrl… — so too is the House Government Oversight Committee supporting XBRL, for the simple reason that the Committee is responsible for ensuring that taxpayer money is spent for purposes that Congress intends.
Just as investors now benefit from more accurate financial reporting from public companies using XBRL, taxpayers may soon enjoy similar benefits. Moreover, XBRL's capability to bring an end to what is often known as "spreadsheet hell" with an open standard subject to automated validation will reduce paperwork and administrative costs. The House should quickly approve this legislation and return it to the Senate for final passage.
Video of the Committee meeting is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2_Dk0cSx3o
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