[OpenSpending] XBRL for Local Government Financial Reporting

Thu Sep 12 18:33:06 UTC 2013

Thanks to Marc's kind introduction and encouragement, I've now written up a
short piece on this in what I hope might be plain language:

http://tabbforum.com/opinions/xbrl-standard-could-increase-technology-complexity-obscure-municipal-financial-disclosure

Any feedback is very welcome,

- Friedrich

On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 4:34 PM, Martin Tisne <mtisne at omidyar.com> wrote:

> + 1 on plain language blog! I have been sending this thread to various
> colleagues but it's hard to decipher at times
> ________________________________
>
> Martin Tisné
> Director, Policy
> Omidyar Network UK Limited
> Cell: +44 782 388 7414
> Landline: +44 20 7033 8655
> Email: mtisne at omidyar.com
> Twitter: @martintisne
>
> On 9 Sep 2013, at 14:21, Anders Pedersen wrote:
>
> > 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] 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 more than
> >
> > Unsubscribe: http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/openspending
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> > Paul Walsh
> >
> > 0543551144
> >
> >
> >
> >
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> >
> >
> >
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> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Anders Pedersen
> > Community Coordinator  |  skype: anpehej  |  @anpe
> > The Open Knowledge Foundation
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> >
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