[OpenSpending] XBRL for Local Government Financial Reporting

Mon Sep 9 11:21:44 UTC 2013

Hi all,

Really great to see this discussion around XBRL vs. GTFS happen. I'd love
to see us to get up a blog post summarising the thoughts on th two
approaches. I think a plain language discussion of this would be really
appreciated in the wider spending community!

Would anyone be up for recapping the past discussion here on the list in a
blog post?

If you want to contribute a Trello ticket is ready to be claimed over at
our news board:
https://trello.com/c/x8fOQlxl/33-xbrl-or-gtfs-finding-the-right-path-for-a-spending-data-standard

Anders

On 5 September 2013 16:30, Marc Joffe <marc at publicsectorcredit.org> wrote:

> Friedrich****
>
> ** **
>
> Thanks for exposing me to GTFS.  Yes, I could see the benefit of migrating
> this type of approach from public transit to government financial
> reporting. Certainly it is easier to read, write and compress a set of CSV
> files than generate and process XBRL.****
>
> ** **
>
> I see that open source code is available for a feed validator at
> https://code.google.com/p/googletransitdatafeed/.****
>
> ** **
>
> While this is all good, I am left with the following questions:  why isn’t
> there already a GTFS equivalent for local government finance and how could
> we get one built?  In the case of GTFS, it appears that Google had both the
> incentive (more people using their maps) and the resources to create the
> initial code and documentation.****
>
> ** **
>
> I don’t think there are enough eyeballs interested in Open Spending data
> to motivate Google or a similar firm to make a similar investment.  If not,
> is a non-profit like OKFn sufficiently resourced and organized to fulfill
> the role that would otherwise be fulfilled by a not-for-profit?****
>
> ** **
>
> It seems that the weakness of XBRL in this case may also be a source of
> strength. Because companies can make money from the complexity of XBRL they
> have an incentive to promote it to legislators and regulators.****
>
> ** **
>
> Marc****
>
> ** **
>
> *From:* openspending-bounces at lists.okfn.org [mailto:
> openspending-bounces at lists.okfn.org] *On Behalf Of *Friedrich Lindenberg
> *Sent:* Thursday, September 05, 2013 12:32 PM
>
> *To:* OpenSpending Discussion List
> *Subject:* Re: [OpenSpending] XBRL for Local Government Financial
> Reporting****
>
> ** **
>
> Marc, ****
>
> ** **
>
> thanks for your response. I understand that XBRL already has a "regulatory
> footprint", and that this may make it simpler to pitch it. The problem with
> this approach is that its using politics to define technical interfaces, a
> process which has brought us lots of the funnies failures of eGovernment.
> Different problems require different solutions, and business accounting and
> government finance are fairly different domains.****
>
> ** **
>
> Additionally, complex XML formats like this tend to create the following
> process: ****
>
> ** **
>
> Government ERP -> lossy conversion to idiomatic XBRL -> more lossy
> conversion to a format that people could use. -> presentation. ****
>
> ** **
>
> This kind of conversion has caused real trouble for the adoption of IATI
> (basically every consumer now builds their own REST API to cover the mess
> of different IATI dialects). The promise of being able to use common
> interfaces for this data just never became true, because the complexity of
> XML (and XBRL) actually makes it less likely that different systems will be
> speaking the same language. I'm dealing with another example of
> heterogeneous XML right now, and it's hell to code:
> https://github.com/pudo/ted-xml/blob/master/forms/contract_award.py. ****
>
> ** **
>
> As an alternative, take Google's GTFS. The format is a zip bundle of CSV
> files and it's easy enough that virtually any larger municipality on this
> planet can produce it; I've also seen parsers for it written in hours. Of
> course you can have validation for it, just like XML schema: taxonomies are
> tables, too. ****
>
> ** **
>
> Why not think along the lines of GTFS?****
>
> ** **
>
> - Friedrich ****
>
> ** **
>
> ** **
>
> ** **
>
> On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 2:48 PM, Marc Joffe <marc at publicsectorcredit.org>
> wrote:****
>
> Paul****
>
>  ****
>
> XBRL is just a dialect of XML. As such it allows a provider of data to
> validate his or her input prior to sending it to third parties.****
>
>  ****
>
> For example, the data I extracted from California Credit Scoring and
> submitted to Open Muni Budget during the Hasadna Hackathon was messy.
> Specifically, we had a lot of spelling variations across different cities
> for revenue and expenditure items.   This kind of issue could be detected
> prior to import by validating the XML against a taxonomy using
> off-the-shelf tools like Altova XMLSpy.  ****
>
>  ****
>
> The strength of XBRL as opposed to CSV and JSON is that it encourages the
> development of a standard for presenting revenue, expenditure and other
> fiscal information in a reliable way that can work with a variety of
> software solutions (Open Spending, Open Muni Budget, etc.).****
>
>  ****
>
> Regards,****
>
> Marc****
>
>  ****
>
> *From:* openspending-bounces at lists.okfn.org [mailto:
> openspending-bounces at lists.okfn.org] *On Behalf Of *Paul Walsh
> *Sent:* Thursday, September 05, 2013 9:32 AM
> *To:* OpenSpending Discussion List
> *Subject:* Re: [OpenSpending] XBRL for Local Government Financial
> Reporting****
>
>  ****
>
> What is the problem that XBRL solves, and how does it do so in way that
> can't be done with CSV or JSON or other data formats that are easily
> accessible?
>
> On Thursday, September 5, 2013, Friedrich Lindenberg wrote:****
>
> Hey Marc, ****
>
>  ****
>
> this is very interesting to see XBRL being picked up, but I have to say
> that I'm critical of its use for non balance-sheet data [1]. XBRL is
> basically a massive framework in which any type of data could be expressed
> (it seems very committee-run), but the benefits really aren't clear to me.
> ****
>
>  ****
>
> You can have well-documented CSV or JSON, too - and for those formats
> there is tooling which is useable by journalists and other end-users who do
> not have the means to start a 3 year XBRL implementation effort. In the
> end, releasing government data as XBRL could mean that only solutions from
> large companies like IBM or SAP would be able to invest the effort
> necessary to interpret the data.****
>
>  ****
>
> Of course it would be nice to have a standard, but this one is so large
> and ambiguous, I can't see it being useful in a technical sense. ****
>
>  ****
>
> Cheers, ****
>
>  ****
>
> - Friedrich ****
>
>  ****
>
>  ****
>
> [1] http://openspending.org/resources/gift/chapter4-2.html ****
>
>  ****
>
> On Wed, Sep 4, 2013 at 8:38 PM, Marc Joffe <marc at publicsectorcredit.org>
> wrote:****
>
> Concha****
>
>  ****
>
> Thanks for these questions. ****
>
>  ****
>
> Like PDFs, XBRL files can either be published or kept confidential.  The
> use of XBRL by itself is not a guarantee of transparency.  However, a
> publicly available machine readable file is better than a publicly
> available PDF, since it is easier to process.  In the world of machine
> readable files, I see XBRL as better than CSV because XBRL tags allow for
> more complete self-documentation of the data, especially if it the data is
> complex.****
>
>  ****
>
> I don’t know how many Spanish cities actually file in XBRL format.  I
> thought the fact that they had a fairly well developed site (at
> http://www.e-local.es/index.html ) indicated a substantial investment and
> perhaps substantial compliance.  On the other hand, I am not seeing recent
> updates.****
>
>  ****
>
> I see some Spanish local government statistics here:
> http://www.minhap.gob.es/EN-GB/ESTADISTICA%20E%20INFORMES/Paginas/estadisticaseinformes.aspx.
> Have you see this before?****
>
>  ****
>
> Regards,****
>
> Marc****
>
>  ****
>
> *From:* openspending-bounces at lists.okfn.org [
> mailto:openspending-bounces at lists.okfn.org<openspending-bounces at lists.okfn.org>]
> *On Behalf Of *Conchita Catalan
> *Sent:* Wednesday, September 04, 2013 3:38 PM
> *To:* openspending at lists.okfn.org****
>
>
> *Subject:* [OpenSpending] XBRL for Local Government Financial Reporting***
> *
>
>  ****
>
> Hello Marc, ****
>
> Thank you for sending the article. It says ****
>
>  ****
>
> "In Spain, the *local government ministry encourages*<http://www.e-local.es/index.html> more
> than ****
>
> Unsubscribe: http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/openspending****
>
>  ****
>
>
>
> -- ****
>
> *Paul Walsh*****
>
> 0543551144****
>
>  ****
>
>
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> ** **
>
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Anders Pedersen

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The Open Knowledge Foundation <http://okfn.org/>

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