A GREAT Step Forward for Transparency
Recently Marc Joffe outlined the significant opportunities presented by the newly passed GREAT Act – and highlighted some steps already taken along the path to its realisation.
At the start of 2020 the US Congress passed the “Grant Reporting Efficiency and Agreements Transparency”, or GREAT, Act.
The GREAT Act presents a significant opportunity to increase transparency on federal funding in the US. It builds on existing requirements for governments and non-profits in receipt of federal funds to submit audited financial statements, by mandating that these statements be reported digitally, in XBRL format, and be published on a public portal by 2025.
This will vastly improve transparency, risk assessment, and comparability – however, it is no easy task, with a large number of stakeholders affected.
However, as Joffe points out, the first steps towards making these reports machine-readable have already been taken through the pioneering work of an XBRL US working group that has developed and published a taxonomy covering key government financial statements.
Financial transparency – rooted in taxonomy-based machine-readable data – is a great thing for governments, businesses, and taxpayers alike, and we hope to see this opportunity taken to its full, great, [Ed — Oh I see what you did there] potential.
Read more here.
