Conor O’Kelly alerted me to this document Creating an Interactive Single Audit Database, which is well worth a read if you get your kicks from auditing…and let’s face it who doesn’t? But the bit I want to focus on is this section, The Real Power of XBRL: The Agreemeent to Agree.

Here’s what it says:

Many see XBRL as a technical solution to create interactive data based on data standards. The technical piece is simply a vehicle to implement the real decision, a necessary concomitant resulting from the agreement that this will be the standard. Once those agreements happen, everyone benefits. Think of the productivity and efficiencies we have realized from standards in such areas as home construction, transportation, health care, retail and even education and health care. We want the data to be interactive, and not get hung up on what produces the data, just like we do not focus on the machine that produces a size 6 dress or a six-panel door. We still have lots of choices and competition, except the competition now is on price, quality and style, as opposed to uniqueness. More importantly, the choice is in the hands of the consumer, not the producer. And isn’t that the essence of data transparency?

The key words to note are ‘agreement’ and ‘standards’. Agreement around a ‘data standard’, in this case XBRL, is fundamental to the business, rather than technical, value proposition of XBRL and fundamental to us here at Rivet given that ‘standards-based’ reporting is what we do.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 8th, 2010 at 1:39 am and is filed under XBRL. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.