Increasing the Value and Timeliness of Business Information Using XBRL

1
Increasing the Value and Timeliness of Business
Information Using XBRL DRM 2.0 Composite
Applications

• XBRL Event at the FDIC Conference Center,
  Arlington, VA
• Brand Niemann (US EPA), Co-Chair,
• Semantic Interoperability Community of Practice
  (SICoP)
• Best Practices Committee (BPC), Federal CIO
  Council
• June 27, 2006

2
Background

• February 1, 2006, XBRL SeminarThe New Data
  Reference Model
• SO THE QUESTION IS Can I do everything I and
  others need to do with these XBRL documents going
  forward (can you spell agility)?
• See http//web-services.gov/scopexbrl02012006.ppt
• February 23, 2006 Present
• FDIC-DRM XBRL Pilot Meetings
• Still trying to find a real use-case for the
  pilot demonstration for decision management -
  very impressed with the semantic interoperability
  technology from Digital Harbor.
• June 8, 2006, XBRL Quarterly Meeting
• U.S. Treasury XBRL Pilot Project Departmental
  Variance Analysis See next slides for comments
  and concerns.

3
Comments and Concerns

• U.S. Treasury XBRL Pilot Project Departmental
  Variance Analysis
• SAS to Excel to XBRL
• SAS and Excel are applications and XBRL is a
  markup language so you have to develop new
  statistical-spreadsheet application(s) to use
  XBRL
• What if statistical-spreadsheet applications were
  made available on the Web? (e.g. recent Google
  announcement!), would you still convert to XBRL?
• http//www.google.com/press/annc/spreadsheets.html
  
• There are probably other non-XBRL data sources to
  be included as well. Would you convert all of
  them as well?
• So while XBRL is good for exchange of financial
  information in a standard, non-proprietary
  format, it does not solve the application
  problem, especially the composite application
  problem!

4
Comments and Concerns

• U.S. Treasury XBRL Pilot Project Departmental
  Variance Analysis (continued)
• Expressed need for open taxonomy which we call
  ontology.
• XML Schemas and taxonomies are a more tightly
  coupled approach RDF Schema and ontologies are
  a more loosely coupled approach and were
  purposely designed to solve the problems that
  basic XML and XML vocabularies are encountering
  in enterprise applications.
• Suggest working on semantic interoperability in
  composite applications
• See next two slides on How Do We Look for
  Anomalies and Detect Problems Across Networks of
  Databases?

5
How Do We Look for Anomalies and Detect Problems
Across Networks of Databases?

• Government Computer News, At your service Forget
  buying software build your next application from
  existing components, April 24, 2006. See
  http//www.gcn.com/print/25_9/40462-1.html
• Kim Nelson, former CIO of EPA, now with Microsoft
  Federal, says using existing components rather
  than building new ones just makes sense.
• The composite application approach is also
  starting to show up in many agency pilot
  programs. In February, the CIO Councils Semantic
  Interoperability working group held a conference
  that demonstrated a number of pilot programs
  using this SOA approach (see next slide).

6
How Do We Look for Anomalies and Detect Problems
Across Networks of Databases?

• Rohit Agarwal, chief technology officer of
  Digital Harbor of Reston, Va., showed off a
  program that tries to detect patterns of money
  laundering and other fraud by monitoring multiple
  sources and collating the data through three
  different operations. Such an application could
  be of interest to the CIA and other intelligence
  or law enforcement organizations.
• The problem with fraud is that it doesnt occur
  through one channel, Agarwal said. This is
  basically a composite problem. Were focused more
  on the relations of the data rather than the data
  itself, because that is where the pattern is.
• See http//colab.cim3.net/file/work/SICoP/EPADRM2.
  0/BNiemann05012006.doc

7
Positioning XBRL

• XBRL is a markup language that converts
  unstructured information to structured data
  and/or proprietary formats to an open standard,
  interoperable format.
• XBRL-enabled software facilitates statistical
  analyses, aggregation, reporting, etc., with XBRL
  data.
• Note I strongly urge XBRL and OASIS to get to
  Google Spreadsheets ASAP about providing for
  import and export of XML-based standards and
  vocabularies.
• Composite applications implementing DRM 2.0 are
  needed to work with XBRL and non-XBRL data
  sources across a network to do smart
  intelligent - interactive information sharing
  applications.

8
Renaming XBRL

• My suggestion (which Sam Mok liked)
• Lets implement DRM 2.0 for cross-agency sharing
  of financial data using XBRL in Composite
  Applications.
• Note This doesnt mean that we have to convert
  everyones financial data to XBRL, at least right
  away, to demonstrate success.
• Per Sam Moks call for a new name how about
• XBRL DRM 2.0 Agile Financial Data Services
  (AFDS)