The XBRL engine builds speed: governments and regulators see interactive data as the key component in the global financial reporting machine, but companies and internal auditors have been slow to plug in

Internal Auditor, August, 2008 by Liz Fisher

RELATED ARTICLE: XBRL Around the World

Large-scale XBRL projects are gathering pace around the world:

* The Netherlands announced recently that financial institutions ABN-AMRO and Rabobank had joined a government Treasury project to evaluate credit risk using XBRL data. Harm Jan van Burg of the Netherlands Treasury, says the decision should lower the cost of borrowing for smaller businesses, and the Treasury aimed to receive 10,000 filings a month by the end of July.

* The Netherlands government has already introduced a single XBRL-based Standard Business Report, covering all filings that companies are required to send to the government. Its aim is to reduce the administrative cost of compliance by 25 percent.

* The Australian government is introducing a similar system that will make XBRL the standard form of communication between government and business, starting with its tax office. Once it is completed, the Australian project will link regulators across all of the country's states and territories, as organizations file electronically using XBRL.

* In the United Kingdom, the government has announced plans to require XBRL to be used for all corporate tax filings after March 2011, and audit-exempt companies are already permitted to submit XBRL filings with Companies House, the agency with which UK companies must file financial reports.

* In Spain, financial institutions are required to file XBRL-based reports and the interactive data is used, among other things, to identify possible money laundering activities.

LIZ FISHER FREELANCE WRITER