[OpenSpending] XBRL for Local Government Financial Reporting

Fri Sep 13 17:11:30 UTC 2013

Just wanted to point out that the DATA act in the US will not require XBRL.
It requires data standardization but does not legislate the particular
format (I believe it uses XBRL as an example of machine readable data but
does not mandate it). I would have left a comment on the blog post but
there's no comments! :)

On Fri, Sep 13, 2013 at 9:58 AM, <openspending-request at lists.okfn.org>wrote:

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>    1. Re: XBRL for Local Government Financial Reporting (Neil Ashton)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2013 09:58:09 -0400
> From: Neil Ashton <neil.ashton at okfn.org>
> Subject: Re: [OpenSpending] XBRL for Local Government Financial
>         Reporting
> To: OpenSpending Discussion List <openspending at lists.okfn.org>
> Message-ID: <909A0050-85B0-4E4E-9C73-F68FA1F1BD15 at okfn.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"
>
> 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 Tisn?
> > 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
> > > The Open Knowledge Foundation
> > > Empowering through Open Knowledge
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> >
> > --
> > Rufus Pollock
> > Founder and Executive Director  |  skype: rufuspollock  |  @rufuspollock
> > The Open Knowledge Foundation
> > Empowering through Open Knowledge
> > http://okfn.org/  |  @okfn  |  OKF on Facebook  |  Blog  |  Newsletter
> >
> >
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