E-Government and the XBRL Standard
The European Union’s e-government Action Plan continues to seek input. The EU is looking for ways to improve the interactions between citizens and government, business and government, between different levels of government and between different governments.
Strong, consistent semantics, data provenance and standardisation are, almost universally, poorly thought out inside large organisations. And for networks of large organisations that rely on each other, (like government departments and agencies) or those collaborating across national boundaries the situation is… well generally worse.
This is an area in which the XBRL standard and the XBRL community can help: a methodology to define clear definitions for data that needs to be prepared, provided and analysed; ways to describe those relationships; ways to manage data quality; a strong software ecosystem and proven methods for securely collecting and managing vast quantities of invaluable information.
Whether it’s expanding the ideas within the Dutch or Australian SBR frameworks, looking to Brazil or the United States for more granular data collection and aggregation, reusing company data collected by national business registrars, or exploring ways to use XBRL taxonomies and data quality rules to re-engineer complex financing requirements, there is plenty within our community that can be leveraged within e-Government.
A topic for discussion at next week’s XBRL Europe meeting in Amsterdam perhaps? Not just relevant in the EU of course. Anyone in the Americas feel like their government data processes are running smoothly? Asia? Oceania? The Middle East? Africa? No? Ok. Plenty to do then. Let’s hear your ideas!
