Spain Sets High Bar for Government Transparency

The government of Spain is doing some very impressive things with government Annual Financial Statements. A new system developed by the Government Comptroller’s Office collects financial statements in XBRL format, making them available to the State Auditors Office, as well as to the public online, in XBRL. In addition to central Government agencies, the system collects data from state owned enterprises and municipalities, on a mandatory basis. Spain is modernising these data flows to help provide information for decision making as well as for national and European statistics. But the fact that all of this is available in one place, in powerful, structured format, for government and the public alike is a significant step forward in terms of open data and government transparency.