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July 12th, 2011 by Raul Varela, CFA - VP, Strategic Initiatives
Raul Varela, Rivet’s VP of Partnerships, comments on the importance of Rivet’s recently announced partnership with CoreFiling. The end of limited liability and the publishing of the AICPA’s Agreed Upon Procedures Engagements for XBRL Tagged Data deepen the need for a comprehensive XBRL review and validation tool – now available from Rivet-CoreFiling.
We recently announced our partnership with CoreFiling to help companies achieve SEC compliance. Rivet Software is at the forefront of standards-based business reporting and analytics, and Corefiling is an expert in validation and regulatory compliance rules. Essentially our partnership is putting two of the smartest guys in the room together and we’re really excited about what this means for our customers. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: AICPA’s SOP 09-1 (Agreed Upon Procedures), CoreFiling, Dragon View, limited liability, Magnify, XBRL Auditing Package
Posted in Auditing, Compliance, Transparency | No Comments »
June 24th, 2011 by Stewart McKie - Executive Advisor
Using XBRL for sustainability reporting just got a shot in the arm via the Global Reporting Initiative’s (GRI’s) newly announced collaboration with Deloitte in the Netherlands to resurrect the moribund GRI XBRL taxonomy. Hopefully the current taxonomy will be revised and updated to reflect the new demands of so-called ‘integrated reporting’ that expects financial and sustainability (or other non-financial) data to be connected to deliver a more holistic perspective of an organization that encompasses both business performance and behavior.
Posted in Communication, Sustainability, Taxonomies, Transparency, XBRL | No Comments »
June 24th, 2011 by Stewart McKie - Executive Advisor
Yes. Old grumpy face is back to encourage you to take a look at a new book by W. David Stephenson called Data Dynamite – How Liberating Information Will Transform Our World. The book calls for a 4-step process to liberate data and free it from the shackles of a document-centric world:
- apply “tags” to it the first time it is entered, giving data meaning and context
- distribute it automatically and in real time, when it will be of most use
- make it available to everyone in an organization – and often outside it – who needs the data (rather than to just a few elites)
- provide new Web 2.0 tools letting non-technical users analyze and act on data collaboratively.
To achieve this worthy aim, the book also proposes a 13-point Liberating Data Manifesto that you will be glad to hear does not involve either burning a bra or shattering a glass ceiling – neither of which are now advisable as they both fail health and safety regulations.
Posted in Transparency, XBRL | No Comments »
June 9th, 2011 by Patrick Quinlan - CEO (2010-2011)
Call to action by Patrick Quinlan in response to statement released by Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA).
Darrell Issa, (R-CA) released the following statement recently regarding the House vote on the question of raising the debt ceiling, “Government debt is crushing our economic growth potential and saddling future generations with a crippling burden. Every dollar the government spends comes from either the taxpayers or is borrowed. Every dollar of spending that is cut is a dollar more that is left in the private sector to be reinvested, directly or indirectly, towards economic expansion and job creation.”
One solution is quite simple: effective financial communication of government revenue sources and spending through a standards based communication platform such as XBRL. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: congress, darrell issa, government oversight, government reform
Posted in Transparency, XBRL | No Comments »
May 25th, 2011 by Stewart McKie - Executive Advisor
The Global Reporting Initiative has announced that it is working on the next generation of its guidelines for ESG/sustainability/integrated reporting. There seems to be some hope for the rather dormant GRI XBRL taxonomy contained in this statement:
In line with our mission to mainstream ESG reporting, a key aim of the G4 Guidelines is to harmonize Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) and sustainability reporting practices around the world. In order to be fit for mainstreaming, the G4 Guidelines will need to be “standard ready”; robust enough to support higher levels of assurance and help companies to produce reports that are trusted by markets and stakeholders.
Note that term ‘standard ready’. It’s impossible to be ‘standard ready’ in today’s world of online information communication without the use of a data standard – like XBRL. So let’s hope that the GRI walks the talk.
Tags: GRI
Posted in Sustainability, Transparency, XBRL | No Comments »
May 25th, 2011 by Stewart McKie - Executive Advisor
The Washington Post reports that The SEC approved rules Wednesday that could make it highly lucrative for Wall Street whistleblowers and other corporate insiders to alert the agency to securities violations. Which is great news in terms of adding another important dimension to corporate transparency – but clearly a touchy subject for many. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Transparency | No Comments »
May 24th, 2011 by Stewart McKie - Executive Advisor
If you’re from New York you might well think that the Tunis Consensus is some kind of cool new sandwich.
Hey! Luigi…gimmee a Tunis Consensus on rye and hold the paprika.
But sorry, it’s not.
In fact it’s a document from 2010 about realizing Africa’s own vision for development and part of that vision includes greater transparency in terms of how aid funding is decided and spent:
Participants agreed that better information flows were essential to improving accountability. Nothing less than full disclosure of development expenditure is necessary. Fiscal transparency includes publishing budget plans and reports and ensuring that the public has ready access to information on the state of public finances and on the structure, functions and financing of public institutions. [p.10 - The Tunis Consensus] Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: aid
Posted in Analytics, Transparency, XBRL | 2 Comments »
May 14th, 2011 by Stewart McKie - Executive Advisor
A new McKinsey report Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition and productivity is worth a skim. McKinsey thinks we are at a tipping point with big data and that there are many ways of leveraging the availability of big data to create value, for example:
Creating transparency – Simply making big data more easily accessible to relevant stakeholders in a timely manner can create tremendous value.
As this is a big report I thought I’d start analyzing it by creating a wordcloud from the text. The results were not that enlightening. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Analytics, Transparency | No Comments »
May 13th, 2011 by Stewart McKie - Executive Advisor
Nike just won best sustainability report in the Ceres-ACCA (Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) North American Awards for Sustainability Reporting.
But as Paul Baier at GreenBiz points out (with a few spelling errors):
When reading traditional annual reports, financial analysis (sic) quickly skim pass (sic) the glossy pictures, platitudes, CEO letter and other marketing fluff and head straight to the financial numbers and footnotes.
Savvy CSR report readers do the same. The value is in the numbers.
So it’s also good to hear that the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) are working even closer together to maintain an explanatory mapping between each other’s sustainability and emissions indicators. That way the text and the numbers in GRI Index reports are more easily compared with those in CDP emissions reports.
Of course what would be even better is if those numbers could be standardized by referencing a single XBRL sustainability taxonomy. Then ‘scope 1′ emissions in a GRI report would always mean the same as ‘scope 1′ emissions in a CDP report – no matter what actual stakeholder report the number ended up in.
Tags: CSR
Posted in Communication, Sustainability, Transparency | No Comments »
May 11th, 2011 by Stewart McKie - Executive Advisor
When I came across Carol Sanford’s pentad, a framework for responsible business – in her book The Responsible Business – I was reminded that transparency is a multi dimensional concept. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Transparency, XBRL | 1 Comment »
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