[OpenSpending] XBRL for Local Government Financial Reporting

Fri Sep 13 13:58:09 UTC 2013

Hi all,

We just cross-posted Friedrich's engaging piece on XBRL on the OpenSpending community blog:

http://community.openspending.org/2013/09/13/finance-data-standards/

—Neil

On 2013-09-12, at 3:02 PM, Rufus Pollock <rufus.pollock at okfn.org> wrote:

> This is great Friedrich - and follows on Marc's equally thoughtful piece. Would you be up for having this cross-posted (either on blog.okfn.org or OpenSpending)?  The points being raised here are important and more broadly relevant ...
> 
> Rufus
> 
> 
> On 12 September 2013 19:33, Friedrich Lindenberg <friedrich.lindenberg at okfn.org> wrote:
> 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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> >
> >
> > --
> > Anders Pedersen
> > Community Coordinator  |  skype: anpehej  |  @anpe
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> -- 
> Rufus Pollock
> Founder and Executive Director  |  skype: rufuspollock  |  @rufuspollock
> The Open Knowledge Foundation
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