Statements of Interest for the Workshop on Improving Access to Financial Data on the Web

5-6 October 2009

Co-organized by W3C and XBRL International, Inc,
and hosted by FDIC, Arlington, Virginia USA

Responses to Call for Participation

This page summarizes information on responses to the CfP, and where available, a link to their paper/statement of interest.

Walter Hamscher (SEC)

Presentation: Yes, Panelist: Yes, Guest: No

Member of Technical Staff, Office of Interactive Disclosure.

I have been discussing the workshop with Cambridge Semantics and am confident they will have a quite illuminating demonstration to present.

Herm Fischer (UBmatrix Inc, and Mark V Systems Limited)

Presentation: Yes, Panelist: Yes, Guest: No

I'm involved in the XBRL Base Spec (vice chair), XBRL Formula (chair), SEC validation (developer of validation software), tools community (developer of XBRL tools), and volunteer to XBRL-US and European COREP/FINREP XBRL Networks developments

Whether or not you wish to make a presentation during the workshop:

Yes, this topic may be relevant to the formula working group activities I'm involved in:

Institutional and individual investors, who want to take advantage of the transparency and comparability XBRL data provides by rendering and visualizing XBRL and non-XBRL data from multiple entities and providing a basis for making informed investment decisions.

My reasoning is:

XBRL Formula has now been prototyped to do exactly this, comparing XBRL (and non-XBRL) data from multiple entities (including where the taxonomies differ) and able to process multiple instance documents (or non-XBRL documents). I cacn send you a presentation made to the Paris XBRL conference on this theme.

For rendering and visualizing data from multiple entities, I built for NTT Data, in Japan, using XPE as the core engine, a multi-instance viewer which visually compares multiple entities instance documents by using commonly recognizable parts of the presentation linkbase to align independent data for the user.

Roberto García (Universitat de Lleida, Spain)

Presentation: Maybe, Panelist: Maybe, Guest: No, Remote?

We have been working on porting XBRL data to the Semantic Web for some time. More specifically, we have translated XBRL data being published through the SEC's EDGAR program into RDF data, which we have made available as Linked Open Data. Our approach is to try to minimise the impact on the way things are currently done in the XBRL world. The transformation gets as input XBRL data as it is currently being produced and, by means of an XML to RDF mapping, generates RDF data that partially models it. The added value is that once available as RDF, it is easier to reuse existing tools in the Semantic Web in order to acilitate more advanced query services, data integration, ... in general any service that profits from semantic technologies. Our experience is that this way it is possible to facilitate offering this kind of services for existing XBRL data while keeping existing tools and practices for XBRL authoring, calculations,... unaltered, thus minimising the impact of Semantic Web technologies adoption.

My intent is to submit a statement of interest, though I don't wish to make a presentation or serve on a panel because I'm not currently sure I'll be able to attend the workshop.

Geoff Shuetrim (Galexy Pty. Limited, Australia)

Presentation: Maybe, Panelist: Maybe, Guest: No, Remote?

I am in the process of assessing the value in attending the event in person. Should I attend in person, I would be glad to submit a comprehensive statement of interest and make a presentation to the workshop. If I do not attend in person I would definitely appreciate being able to observe using teleconferencing facilities, as discussed with Richard Campbell of the FDIC.

Statement of interest: I am an editor on key XBRL specifications (Most recently the formula and related specifications). I also maintain the leading open-source XBRL API implementation (http://www.xbrlapi.org/). With these points of contact, I am as aware as anyone of the compromises inherent in XBRL's foundations.

My core interest in XBRL is improving the ways that companies can address the needs of investors to perform broad cross-section and long time-series analysis of corporate financial data. The design of the XBRL API, that I maintain, reflects this interest. I would like to better understand the full range of issues involved in bringing XBRL (or an alternative) closer to the semantic web technologies being released through the W3C.

Geoff sent this link: Can XBRL be simpler?. Note that the document is still under construction.

Allyson Ugarte (Rose Enterprises, Inc.)

Presentation: No, Panelist: No, Guest: No

Statement of Interest: I attended the first meeting of this workgroup this spring in Wash DC, and look forward to the continuing discussion of XBRL applications on the Web.

XBRL projects in the United States and Spain. Bilingual coordination with XBRL Iberoamerica. Member of XBRL working groups and development of taxonomies, including XBRL US GAAP, IFRS, and COREP.

Howard Kaplan (SEC)

Presentation: No, Panelist: Yes, Guest: Yes

The Office of Interactive Data (OID) is responsible for the SEC¹s implementation of its XBRL-related rules. I am a manager in OID and am primarily interested in the tools and utilities available for SEC filers, SEC staff, and investors to make use of the structured data filings.

Any other agenda suggestions: Feasibility, advantages, usefulness, and issues with building a cross-government data repository populated with structured data (XBRL and other tagged data). What would the governance model be? What roles for public, NFP, and private sectors? Technical and organizational challenges.

n.b. Walter Hamscher and David Blaszkowsky will be speaking (both from the SEC)

Linda F. Powell (Federal Reserve Board of Governors)

Presentation: No, Panelist: No, Guest: No

I would like to attend your workshop on Oct 5 - 6. My contact details are below. I have worked with XBRL in a couple of ways. I was on the FFIEC team, along with the FDIC, that used XBRL for a data collection and editing system. I have also used the XBRL standards, along with Dublin Core, as the basis for an internal project and written a couple of papers about using XBRL or integrating XBRL with other standards. I have also worked with the SDMX community regarding financial reporting. I'm interested in the topics on your agenda. In particular I am interested in semantic-based technologies and cloud computing which I am not very familiar with.

Dale Moberg (Axway)

Presentation: No, Panelist: Yes, Guest: Yes (Daryl Eicher)

Axway supports development of semantic-based standards to enable comparability of XBRL data for multiple organizations and to provide a basis for integrating XBRL data with other data to support more intelligent and reactive risk assessments for commercial and governmental ecosystems.

Axway intends to submit a more detailed statement of interest by 21 August 2009. One or two Axway employees will attend the workshop.

Axway is willing to serve on a panel at the workshop but does not require time for a presentation elaborating its statement of interest.

Alexandre Passant (DERI)

Presentation: Yes, Panelist: Yes, Guest: Yes (Sean O'Riain)

Alexandre will attend remotely, but his co-author Sean O'Riain will present the paper in person.

The Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI) at NUI Galway would like to participate in the upcoming W3C Workshop on Improving Access to Financial Data on the Web. We cannot confirm right know who from DERI will attend but I will act as the main contact point and will let you know as soon as we have more information.

We have been working during the past years on two fields that are - in our opinion - relevant with regards to the workshop topics, one being Social Data and the Semantic Web, including among others our work on SIOC, the second one being Linked Data, including recent efforts within our Linked Data Research Center. We would like to consider the opportunity of discussing how Linked Data and Semantic Social Data can be used to improve access and transparency of financial data on the Web, as well as focusing on related challenges.

Please find our proposed submission, on behalf of DERI, NUI Galway and OpenLink Software We would be more than happy to present it during the workshop and to discuss the topics as well as the various activities that could be done within W3C on the subject.

Edward Curry (DERI)

Presentation: Yes, Panelist: Yes, Guest: Maybe

Our interest is the promotion of semantic technologies to assist stake holder’s access and make better sense of financial information. We have direct observations from financial use cases in the area and have an interest in the remaining research challenges and the application of that output to the utility tools that will be required. Our statment of interest was authored by myself, Andreas Harth (Universität Karlsruhe) and Sean O’Riain (DERI)

Other agenda suggestions: The topic of formulating a dedicated W3C working group on the topic and establishing collaborative links with XBRL US and Europe with a view to contributing towards the set of next generation tools required to utilise this financial data.

Lee Feigenbaum (Cambridge Semantics)

Presentation: Yes, Panelist: Yes, Guest: No

We are working with Walter to put together a demonstration of some of what can be done with XBRL and other financial data given the agility of Semantic Web tools. The general theme will be on the power that Semantic Web technologies give to end users in making use of data that has been published in a standard (XBRL) way, in particular by combining other data sets with the XBRL data. Karen indicated to me that the theme of the workshop might be broadened to include government data, in which case we might also show a similar example in the context of recovery.gov stimulus data.

Michelle Leder (Footnoted)

Presentation: No, Panelist: Yes, Guest: No

I'm very interested in attending the workshop on Improving Access to Financial Data on Oct. 5 and 6. For the past 6 years, my site, footnoted.org has looked at the things companies bury in their routine SEC filings. The site has been named a "must read" by the WSJ and a top financial site by CNN/Money, BusinessWeek and the FT. There's more information about me and my site.

Over the past year, I've spent a greater amount of time trying to understand how XBRL will make what I do more efficient, which, in turn, will enable me to get through more filings. And, to be honest, I remain a bit skeptical that it will, so any opportunity to learn more about this would be very helpful.

I'm not interested in doing a presentation, but I'd be happy to serve on a panel to talk about how bloggers and journalists (I consider myself to be a bit of both) currently use financial data.

Theresa C. Palya (Federal Reserve Board of Governors IT Division)

Presentation: No, Panelist: Yes, Guest: Yes (Scott Meyerle)

Statement of Interest: As an IT manager with responsibility for financial data applications that accept data from external sources and are subject to FOIA, I have a vested interest in both the consumption and production of data formatted in XBRL and related languages, and in the broader opportunities for semantic technologies to realize the goals of transparency.

Christopher Ball (neoAbacus)

Presentation: Yes, Panelist: Yes, Guest: Yes (Laura Rowland)

It is our opinion that there is a great deal of opportunity to enhance the access to financial information via the Web. However, we see one of the current significant barriers as the lack of intuitive and widely understood conceptual tools and terminology for describing, thinking about, and sharing ideas in this problem space. It is our opinion that the most dramatic accelerant to innovation and maturity in the exchange of financial information is in the simple aspect of how it is conceptualized and talked about. We have a number of ideas to offer in this line of thinking and look forward to sharing them. I would be willing to make a presentation depending on the topic. Our statement of interest.

Benjamin Grosof (Vulcan Inc.)

Presentation: Yes, Panelist: Yes, Guest: Maybe, Remote: Maybe

This is to let you know that I am indeed interested in attending the W3C + XBRL Workshop on Improving Access to Financial Data on the Web. I hope to attend in person, but that will take a while to figure out definitely. I plan to attend at least remotely.

Brief statement of interest: I believe that providing better access to financial data on the web is a huge need and opportunity, and have done research and professional service work in this area since the late 1990s, while first at IBM Research, then MIT Sloan, and now at Vulcan. XBRL and similar financial reporting can benefit greatly from better semantic knowledge representation (KR) techniques for its rules, ontologies, and data querying, such as the KR in W3C standards and in the SILK system that my effort at Vulcan is developing. Another big opportunity is semantic rule-based policies for trading, compliance, and regulatory policies, again using the KR in SILK and W3C standards.

Other agenda suggestions: It would be great to get someone(s) from the relevant part(s) of the federal government to present their pain points and needs requirements/goals. We will need the-bigger-picture kinds of stuff to help focus us. Perhaps Walter Hamscher could help with this aspect. Maybe Brand Niemann too.

Attached is my statement of interest submission (position paper) for the Workshop, in pdf. I tried to keep it pithy. Thanks for the encouragement to participate.

This is an area I've been involved in since my MIT Sloan days, when I acted for a year or two around 2006 as an informal scientific adviser to the XBRL effort and helped stir W3C's interest in XBRL.

If you'd like, I'd be glad to present the ideas in a brief talk at the Workshop. However, it looks as of now that I probably will not be able to attend in person but rather only remotely. I'm not sure you'll be set up for handling remote presenters. From my end, however, arranging a webconference with slides and voice connection is quite doable (indeed, we do it all the time among my team).

Ben Hu (Data Management International)

Presentation: Maybe, Panelist: Maybe, Guest: Maybe

  1. Would like to understand ways XBRL could be better and more easily integrated with the mainstream enterprise applications;
  2. Related to above, would also like to understand how the XBRL as a business data standard can be adopted and used in applications besides those just for financial reporting;
  3. Have some discussion on the architectural issues which would help or hinder the interoperability between the various XML based standards, with XBRL as an example.

Any other agenda suggestions: Suggest to invite some business people to speak and attend so we can understand better the gaps, the pain points and how and where the standards should be built and used in helping solve bottom line business problems.

Danilo Peña (Senior Tax Analyst for Daimler Automotive Venezuela)

Presentation: No, Panelist: No, Guest: No, Remote: Yes

I’m pleased to express my interest in participating. However, some limitations prevent me to attend in person, so I would like to know if you are going to activate any kind of online participation.

I’ve been actively dedicated to investigate potentials application of XBRL in the financial environment of my country, including the optimization of electronic tax filings processes carried out by our tax administration SENIAT, equivalent to IRS in your country.

If you agree, I may participate in this workshop through a humble contribution consisting in my working paper about “XBRL potential applications on electronic tax filings in Venezuelan Financial Environment”; first prize-awarded in a contest held during II National Congress of Public Accountants held in Mérida, Venezuela.

In fact, recently I had the pleasure to meet Mr. Kurt Ramin, who participated in a professional event (FORO NIIF 2009) that took place in Valencia on Febraury 9th and 10th and I had the opportunity to briefly inform him about this investigating efforts.

Right now I’m developing an XBRL Education and Learning Program to increase awareness and understanding of XBRL in my country, and the information I can get through participation in this workshop, by online means, will be valuable to supplement this small contribution to the development of our profession.

Benjamin Rhatigan (Matrixware)

Presentation: Maybe, Panelist: No, Guest: No

I'm a technical consultant to a company called Matrixware. I attended Diane Mueller's presentation on XBRL at the SemTech conference in San Jose, CA, in June, where I also met Karen Myers, and found the discussion very relevant to the work of my firm and am interested in attending your workshop on improving access to financial data on the web at the FDIC in October. I do not wish to make a presentation during the workshop or be on a panel, but am very interested in observing and participating in the discussions related to the ramifications of the change to XBRL.

Matrixware, based in Vienna, Austria, with both European and American operations and clients, offers services for professional information retrieval. We are at the forefront of semantic technological innovation, providing solutions such as text engineering for businesses to link disparate data sources, particularly financial data and news feeds, and assist in transforming them into information for both internal clients and the external marketplace. Additionally, we have constructed a data repository of 70 million documents, a large portion of which is SEC filings and other financial data, and the transition to a mandated XBRL reporting format has the potential to affect our work profoundly. In conclusion, we believe that Matrixware and its clients would benefit greatly from the interchange of ideas and knowledge gained from attendance at the workshop, while in turn contributing examples and case studies for other attendees.

Ariel Blumencwejg

Presentation: No, Panelist: No, Guest: No

I would like to attend your workshop as an observer. Considering submitting a proposal for the specification of an XML-based standard for the formal description of an asset-backed security cashflow waterfall structure as part of its new issue registration process with the goal of open sourcing the modeling aspects of these securities from the investors point of view. Currently, investors can access to the cashflow model only through expensive proprietary systems and only indirectly through the output of such systems, with the model itself generally inaccessible and/or not freely shareable. Open sourcing the cashflow model would permit investors to freely share this model amongst different applications, such as pricing and risk application, possibly giving rise to whole new risk and pricing applications and services. In addition open sourcing the cashflow model would have the significant added benefit of giving investors greater reassurance as to its soundness as they would be able to check it against the prospectus directly if in doubt. Ultimately it should be a contribute to make this market, notoriously opaque, more transparent and symmetric.

Have shared this proposal/idea with Carl Malamud who suggested that I approach your committee to elicit interest. In addition, have approached regulators, who have expressed interest in the feasibility of this idea. Would be happy to share this proposal further at the workshop if interested.

Liv Watson (IRIS Business Services and Vice Chair of XBRL International, Inc. )

Presentation: No, Panelist: No, Guest: Yes

No statement of position

Crissman Nichols (U.S. Census Bureau)

I want to get some sense of the extent to which the Federal community is adopting or poised to adopt use of XBRL, and the role, if any, of OMB in such usage.

Gary A. Wicklund (Capricorn Research)

Presentation: No, Panelist: No, Guest: No

I have been involved with XBRL since 2002 working with the US GAAP insurance taxonomy; encouraging participation in the SEC Voluntary Filing Project; attending XBRL International meetings; and promoting the implementation of XBRL adoption.Recently I have helped with the SEC EDGAR filings and assisted insurance companies participating in filings with the SEC.From my academic career I have contacted several academic institutions encouraging them to become members of XBRL-US.I have been a speaker discussing XBRL for companies and the academic community of faculty and students. I am particularly interested in the area of academic research and the use of XBRL data.

Patrick J. Slattery (Deloitte Consulting)

Presentation: Yes, Panelist: Yes, Guest: Yes

I have been involved in financial reporting for large, complex organizations for over twenty-five years. Throughout my career I have been involved in leading organizations through the design of metrics and information, supporting analysis and work-processes and the underlying enabling technologies. Those technologies include the use of packaged general ledger applications and consolidation, reporting and business intelligence tools as well as the use of spreadsheet technology. I have seen the evolution of some of these tools and the adoption challenges of new technologies. I am interested in exploring the business and financial uses of XBRL beyond regulatory reporting requirements, especially with respect to a framework, or architecture, which supports transparency, self-service and knowledge sharing to meet challenges currently addressed by spreadsheet and other ad-hoc technology or limits imposed by packaged software functionality constraints. See my statement of interest.

Any other agenda suggestions: I would suggest extending the current agenda topic of: “What data architectures are appropriate and how can the costs of preparing data be kept in line with the benefits?” to include an evaluation of the fit of the following technologies and expectations regarding their evolution in an XBRL world: general ledger and sub-ledger systems, financial consolidation and reporting tools, ETL and data warehouse technology, other business intelligence tools and spreadsheets.

Roger Debreceny (Shidler College of Business University of Hawai'i at Mānoa)

Presentation: No, Panelist: Yes, Guest: No

I have been involved with research on XBRL since my conference paper presented at the 1998 Annual Meeting of the American Accounting Association, subsequently published as: Debreceny, R., and G. L. Gray. 2001. The production and use of semantically rich accounting reports on the Internet: XML and XBRL. International Journal of Accounting Information Systems 2 (1):47-74. More recently I co-chaired with Prof. Bill McCarthy of Michigan State University the Workshop on Ontological Specification of Interoperability Semantics for Financial Information and Business Reporting Systems funded by the National Science Foundation. The workshop was held in May 2008 covered somewhat similar ground to that of the W3C/XBRL workshop. I am focused on issues such as taxonomy quality and interoperability and the impact of XBRL and similar technologies on the disclosure environment for private and public entities internationally.

Any other agenda suggestions

  • XBRL inter-operability with other semantic standards
  • Role of academic research in accounting, auditing, accounting information systems and computer science

See my statement of interest.

Mark Montoya (FDIC)

Presentation: Yes, Panelist: Yes, Guest: Yes (Alan Deaton)

Currently work with XBRL in the collection of financial data from 7900 banks and have interest on how FDIC's existing efforts can be extended to use additional web based technologies for semantic and analysis purposes. FDIC is interested on leveraging XML based technologies to better manage large data sets which include financial, economic and statistical data. FDIC's semantic interests in financial data analysis extend beyond internal systems and include transparency with additional government agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Federal Reserve Board (FRB) and the Office of Comptroller of Currency (OCC). The W3 workshop will greatly enhance our current discussions and future research in the field of financial semantic analysis.

Concerning semantics - Federal Reserve Boards Micro Data Reference Manual (MDRM):

  • Present how the MDRM is used for the collection of over 70 public financial regulatory forms and used internally by 3 regulatory agencies to collect, analyze and disseminate financial, economic and statistical data.

Or

  • Concerning ontology - A US financial regulatory reporting framework. Present how an MDRM instance can support multiple financial classes for regulatory reporting including relations, rules and restrictions using a basic XBRL structure.
Yuta Tanaka (Fijitsu)

Presentation: No, Panelist: No, Guest: No

As a XBRL Spec WG member and software vender, I'm interested in finding followings

  • How XBRL makes impact or affects to current business or current Web service
  • How XBRL and Web technology collaborate with to generate new innovations
  • What are expectations for next XBRL solutions
  • What are issues or challenging for that, from business perspective
  • What are issues or challenging for that, from technological perspective
  • What are expectations to improve current XBRL specification

Whether you wish to bring a colleague : No (Someone may come from Japanese organization separately)

Dan Bellerue (DBI Financial Systems, Inc.)

Presentation: No, Panelist: Yes, Guest: No

DBI provides FFIEC Quarterly Call Report preparation software to US banks. The software consumes XBRL taxonomies and prepares XBRL instance documents for submission via Web Services to the FFIEC Central Data Repository.

Paulo Caetano da Silva (Central Bank of Brazil)

Presentation: Yes, Panelist: Yes, Guest: No, Remote: Yes

My interest in participating in the workshop is to disseminate the work on my Ph.D. at the Center for Informatics, Federal University of Pernabuco. This work has publications in international conferences in the area of computer science, as XSYm 2009 and DOLAP 2009, besides Brazilian Congresses.

The current commercial and academic OLAP tools do not process XML data that make use of XLink. To develop OLAP systems for helping in the analysis of such data, this paper proposes an analytical query language, namely LMDQL (Link-based and Multidimensional Query Language). Before presenting LMDQL, a multidimensional data model based on XLink is given. Then, the LMDQL syntax is detailed together with its operators and a discussion on its processor architecture. Finally, a case study based on XBRL Dimensions documents is given. XBRL can be seen as a standard used in the publication of financial data over internet and contains linkbases based on XLink. See statement of interest.

Joseph Vicari (Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc.)

Presentation: No, Panelist: Yes, Guest: Yes

No statement of interest!

Sanjeev Chourasia (FRSGlobal Inc.)

Presentation: No, Panelist: Yes, Guest: Yes

FRSGlobal delivers industry leading regulatory and risk solutions to the global financial services marketplace. Our solutions consist of a software framework of data models and report definitions together with rich automated content. Various sources like pdf files, excel , XBRL etc are used to generate regulatory solution. Gaining information and knowledge from the workshop will be advantageous for us to leverage more on XBRL in our regulatory reporting solutions for financial institutes.

David Watson (WHK Horwath, Australia)

Presentation: Yes, Panelist: Yes, Guest: Yes (Daniel Walls)

WHK Horwath is interested in participating in the forthcoming workshop to further explore and identify opportunities for the use of XBRL and other semantic-based technologies to enable better business analysis. WHK Horwath is willing to share the experiences gained and demonstrate the solutions developed from our recent work in this field. See my statement of interest.

Benjamin Manning (Intuit)

Presentation: No, Panelist: No, Guest: No

Ben is working at our Small and Medium Business Division, particularly focusing on accounting practice. Ben has been playing an advocate and driving role for adopting XBRL within Intuit products and services.

Owen Ambur (Co-Chair AIIM StratML Committee)

Attendence dependent on StratML being on the Workshop agenda

At this point I don't plan to be in the DC area on October 5 or 6 and, thus, I have no plans to attend the XBRL workshop on improving access to financial data on the Web.

However, if there is interest in discussing the potential relationships between XBRL and Part 2 of AIIM's emerging Strategy Markup Language (StratML) standard, I might be able either to change my plans and/or arrange for another member of the StratML Committee to participate.

Part 2 of AIIM's emerging Strategy Markup Language (StratML) standard will address the elements of performance plans and reports. In conjunction with StratML, prospects should be explored for using XBRL productively to automate the reporting of progress against performance objectives in near-real time on the Web.

Hopefully, either Jim St. Clair and/or Allyson Ugarte will be there and could act as an observer(s) for the StratML Committee. In the event that there is interest in discussing this particular topic, perhaps my StratML Committee co-chair, Adam Schwartz of GPO, and/or Betsy Fanning, AIIM's Director of Standards, could be present for that session.

I don't necessarily wish to make a presentation, but if there is interest in StratML, I will be more than happy to assist in providing any information that may be helpful in facilitating consideration of potential relationships to and synergies with XBRL.

Craig Statchuk (IBM, Canada)

Presentation: Yes, Panelist: Yes, Guest: No, Remote: Possibly

Simplified XBRL Data Views and Business Intelligence: XBRL documents provide a wealth of information with business context, dimensional organization and aggregated summaries that make these documents an ideal source for reporting and analysis with a variety of Business Intelligence tools.

XBRL schemas are designed to be extensible. XBRL linkbases can be customized to meet almost any business reporting need. Unfortunately, this inherent flexibility makes XBRL one of the more complex XML vocabularies in use today.

Our paper and associated presentation will describe some the difficulties faced by an XBRL enterprise development team. We will offer possible solutions including options for simplified intermediate views of data. The usefulness of Business Intelligence data models and reporting strategies will also be reviewed.

Potential discussion points will include:

  • Value of normalized data – particularly with variable reporting periods.
  • Comparability of data between reporting entities.
  • Import and export of XBRL data for more pervasive sharing.
  • Strategies for handling schemas that change or become obsolete.
Christian Leibold (Semantic Technology Institute, Austria)

Presentation: Yes, Panelist: Yes, Guest: No

Representing the MUSING project consortium and STI Innsbruck: In the EU funded project MUSING (Multi-Industry semantic Business Intelligence; IST Project Number FP6 – 027097) we deliver solutions and services to enable perceptive Business Intelligence, mainly show cased in three discourse domains covering (IT-) operational, financial and internationalization risks. Novel applications combine knowledge management, advanced predictive analytics and intelligent access to third party data through the integration of semantic technologies. This includes the instrumentalization of XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) compliant data to map from/to ontologies. In our statement we explain our motivation for this task, demonstrate our results that enable XBRL data to be used in ontologies and provide a rationale on the impact of ourachievements.

We would like to detail our approach for the use of XBRL in semantic technologies and what/how we achieved. Certainly we are certainly adapting to the specific context of the workshop and are happy for suggestions on a specific focus or which parts we should emphasize. I can contribute mostly in technical panels, certainly contact to domain experts from the financial industries in Europe (that are participating in the project MUSING) can be provided too. As well prepared input of the experts can be presented in the workshop if requested. See my statement of interest.

Brendan Reilly, Financial Modeler

Presentation: No, Panelist: Yes, Guest: No

My interest is using XBRL for transparent reporting, and building tools and framerworks to enhance this. My background includes running CSNet under Dave Farber, working on an undersea robot at WHOI, medical research using large datasets to elucidate novel connections between cancer and diabetes, and tool construction in fixed income trading at JPMorgan. XBRL is a tool I use to normalize the large volume of data I gather in trading, and in conjunction with my studies for the Charters Financial Analyst designation.

Ralf Frank (DVFA GmbH)

Presentation: Maybe, Panelist: Yes, Guest: No

DVFA is the Society of Investment Professionals in Germany. I would like to express my interest in attending the W3C/XBRL International, Inc. Workshop on Improving Access to Financial Data on the Web. The attached paper contains a brief passage on my interest including a reference to an article which summarizes some of my positions on interactive data and increased transparency. Should any additional statement or a more detailed position paper be needed I'd be happy to provide it.

Taimur Khan (Oracle)

Presentation: Yes, Panelist: Yes, Guest: Yes

Oracle Corporation would like to submit its interest in participation for the upcoming Workshop on Improving Access to Financial Data on the Web. We will have two participants as observers (and potential presenter), and also would like to nominate our topic for participation and presentation.

Oracle has invested a significant amount in supporting XBRL from a tooling and a storage perspective. We have leveraged the power of the Oracle Database technology to provide a scalable and highly available XML repository that has specific support for XBRL document handling and processing. Additionally, we see increasing solutions around compliance, reporting and management of the data as the challenges with XBRL as an information exchange platform.

Our team is interested in hearing how the federal commissions and corporations are looking to address some of these challenges and how we could potentially provide capabilities and solutions in this emerging requirement.

We plan to discuss and present how the Oracle capabilities in both the consumption and management of XBRL, the output and generation of XBRL submissions and also potentially discuss the partnerships Oracle has established to better solidify solutions in this area.

Ashu Bhatnagar (Good Morning Research, Softpark)

Presentation: Yes, Panelist: Yes, Guest: No

I hope that we get an opportunity to share our XBRL and RDF integration work with you sometime. In the meantime, I am enclosing a copy of our response to an SEC RFI which shows some sample screen shots and details of our XBRL/RDF/Sparql integrated working product. See also my statement of interest which covers our interest in the non-comparability issue for XBRL stemming taxonomy extensions.

Milla Bakhareva (Elbrus Research)

Presentation: No, Panelist: No, Guest: No

Elbrus Research is a provider of the emerging market equity research. We cover public companies from four countries and are working on producing a single research platform. Applying Semantic Web technologies will allow us to combine XBRL data from different countries to make possible for investors to track and analyze company data across various reporting standards, apply a variety of analytics, and aggregate background information on markets and individual global companies. I would like to share our experience in producing XBRL-tagged financial research as well as our outlook on what should be done to integrate XBRL with in-house analytic systems.

J.H. Snider (iSolon.org)

Presentation: Maybe, Panelist: Maybe, Guest: No

He is interested in transparency of government and publishes a blog on opportunities for democratic reform brought about by new information technologies. His statement of interest.

Cate Long (Multiple Markets)

Presentation: Yes, Panelist: Yes, Guest: No

My name is Cate Long and I have a firm called Multiple-Markets. I also head a open source project for financial markets regulation called Riski.

I've long had an interest in XBRL through the work of the SEC in mandating the reporting of public company disclosure in XBRL format. I argued for the use of XBRL in the public reporting of data from credit rating agencies. This requirement was adopted by the SEC.

Although my interests in XBRL are varied I am applying to attend as an observer. Particularly I am interested in any discussion that would apply to H.R. 2392 to make XBRL the standard for disclosure to the US government. This would follow on the heels of other nations including Australia who have moved in the direction of requiring standardized XBRL reporting to the federal government.

I would attend on my own and would be happy to present or serve on a panel. The topic I could speak most expertly on is the reporting of default statistics by credit rating agencies and XBRL.

Tim McNamar (E-Certus Software)

Presentation: Yes, Panelist: Yes, Guest: No

My interest is applying XBRL to the MSRB filings for municipal securities, plus linking the federal appropriations process with the departmental/agencies commitment and outlays, then reporting back to the Congress. We also have a pilot with the Corp of Engineers starting in October this year to use XBRL to upgrade their existing financial systems.

Dan Schutzer (FSTC)

Presentation: Maybe, Panelist: Yes, Guest: Yes

I run an association of Financial Institutions, Government and Vendors who collaborate to help solve industry problems. I have been tracking XBRL since its inception and am very interested in helping to articulate the benefits of Financial Institutions using this tool and to discuss the possibility of extending this into the area of Risk Management.

Olivier de Duve (EarlyTracks SA, Belgium)

Presentation: No, Panelist: No, Guest: Yes (Brice de Behault)

We are a start-up founded by seasoned institutional capital markets investors. Our company is busy with an ambitious R&D project to create a tool that will use semantic technologies to process flows of news and information coming from numerous sources and automatically create a knowledge base. Business rules will then be applied to help the investment management, credit officers and other business and financial manager to make informed decisions. We plead for systematic online access on Linked Data to business and financial data under a machine readable format. This should be mandatory for all listed companies and on a voluntary basis for others. It would greatly help us to treat the data and analyze it systematically.

Mark Saltzburg (independent)

Presentation: No, Panelist: No, Guest: No

I have an interest in bank regulation in connection with graduate level studies on banking regulation I have done at George Washington University. Also, in a previous job, I worked as an attorney in private practice where I helped a professional organization provide commentary to the SEC on XBRL reporting.

I currently work for a private equity firm interested in investment in banks and would like to understand more about their reporting, however, I am not attending on behalf of any organization but more purely based on my personal interest in learning more about banking financial reporting to apply to my work.

Kevin Webb (Sunlight Foundation)

Presentation: No, Panelist: No, Guest: No

I am a developer and analyst at the Sunlight Foundation, a government transparency advocacy group, where I've built system for collecting and re-presenting data from FDIC, Fed and SEC data sources. Prior to joining Sunlight I worked on projects related to consumer banking and mortgage securitization. Primarily, I'm interested improved public access and bulk data interfaces to existing government maintained finance data. I am also interested in learning about possibilities for improved financial transparency through the creation of new systems for tracking and communicating financial data, particularly in consumer finance. Ideally, I would like to see some discussion of the organizational and political challenges in the creation of new data sets/interfaces as well as discussion of current opportunities and initiatives for increasing transparency within the finance industry through improved data access.

Jeanne Pujanauski (Independent software developer)

Presentation: No, Panelist: No, Guest: No

I am a software analyst and developer that works on financial applications, data ETL and reporting. I want to learn more about how to use XBRL for this.

James Keeney (Industrial Medium Software, Inc.)

Presentation: No, Panelist: No, Guest: No

We are developing a software service to provide retirement plan administrators with customized investment information profiles and factsheets. As part of our development efforts we are very interested in ensuring that our product may both digest and produce the information in XBRL format. Currently, our service is dependent upon third-party data providers for our source of information on publicly traded mutual funds. If the use of XBRL and associated standards become commonly accepted in the industry, our sources of data and the type of service we provide may change. My primary intent would be to attend as an observer. The discussion and trends discussed will have a significant impact on the success of our new line of business.

I would be interested in a discussion of the Government's role as a data clearinghouse once XBRL is in common use. I would also be interested in a discussion of the changes int he auditing function when XBRL is the primary means of handling all financial data.

Richard Campbell (FDIC)

Presentation: No, Panelist: Yes, Guest: Yes

Since I haven't seen it proposed yet, and as the proposed legislation would cause significant change to the US Federal Goverment, and probably spread through other governments, I'd like to propose a panel discussion to list, identify and address issues around the adoption of a single financial standard.

  1. What effect would a single financial standard for the US government have on the rest of the world?
  2. Would such a standard be something W3C would/should codify as an open standard?
  3. XBRL is understood as being not suitable for transactions. Can this be addressed and solved?
Barbara Clements (Southeast Missouri State University)

Presentation: No, Panelist: No, Guest: No

I am a graduate student at Southeast Missouri State University. My research project looks at how individual investors react to learning about XBRL and its possibilities to improve their financial analysis. I am using the Technology Acceptance Model to collect feedback on individual investor's reactions to learning about XBRL and the SEC's Interactive Financial Report Viewer.

I am very interested in how XBRL can help the individual investor gather and use financial information. In addition to my academic interest in this topic, I am an investor myself and participate in several forums of investors so I believe I have a very good idea of what individual investors want in on-line access to financial information.

Ernest A. Capozzoli (Kennesaw State University)

Presentation: No, Panelist: Yes, Guest: No

I am an academic that trains approximatly 200 graduate accounting students annually in basic to advanced XBRL tagging. I am interested in both the research and teaching of XBRL. I am a member of XBRL US. The discussions related to XBRL use will assist me developing and extending research in the XBRL area. I am particularly interested in the impact of versioning on data warehousing and financial analysis.

Donna Roy (Enterprise Data Management Office, DHS)

Presentation: Yes, Panelist: Perhaps, Guest: Anthony Hoang

I am the Director, Enterprise Data Management Office, and Executive Director, for National Information Exchange Model. The National Information Exchange Model (NIME) Program, is currently evaluating the addition of a financial reporting domain based on work completed in the development of the schemas for State Recipient reporting for ARRA. Of interest to the program is an understanding of the challenges and opportunities for the integration or harmonization of NIEM for its transactional information exchange framework, and XBRL for its advanced technology for financial reporting. I will be bringing Anthony Hoang, Principal Information Architect.

Eric Cohen (XBRL Global Ledger Working Group)

Presentation: No, Panelist: No, Guest: No

I have represented XBRL to the W3C for many years, with particular interests in XML Security, Rules, and EXI. I want to promote a world where a piece of business data, once it hits any computer, anywhere, doesn't need to be retyped as it moves along the business reporting supply chain, with all necessary security and availability. I wish to ensure that people understand XBRL is not just about standardized business reports, but about integration of all necessary data, rules and processes throughout the Business Reporting Supply Chain, and is as applicable to governmental ERP and information systems as it is to commercial use. I am interested in the relevance of OWL and RDF to the semantic represented by the Global Ledger.

Tom Saleh (FlexiSphere)

Presentation: No, Panelist: No, Guest: No

I have been involved in the XBRL community since 2007. I led the FASB participation in building the USGAAP taxonomy and have participated presented at several conferences and panels including the NSF conference in 2008.

FlexiSphere is a purpose built cloud computing environment for financial services industry and is committed to adding XBRL to the communities of interest that we support.

If a presentation on the state of Cloud Computing as it relates to financial information is of interest I would be happy to present or participate in a pannel or workshop.

Steve Levine (Ubmatrix)

Presentation: No, Panelist: Yes, Guest: No (but see Herm Fischer)

As an XBRL software provider, I'm interested in what is needed from XBRL to support the theme of the workshop. For example how can XBRL support HR 2392? What is the intersection or common interest between XBRL and NIEM or XBRL and ARRA reporting. I've been involved in dialogues with various participants and am interested in participating in the discussion at this forum.

Alberto Jose A. Clavecillas (Deloitte and Touche)

Presentation: No, Panelist: No, Guest: No

Improving access to financial data on the web brings about security and privacy aspects to current federal financial systems. It also has an effect to new technologies such as cloud computing as well as inter-agency, inter-entity data exchange and transmitting business financial information. Working with federal financial services agencies, I am interested in these matters as well as the impact and possible opportunities and challenges with providing greater transparency on financial reporting.

Julie M. Seda (Unaffiliated)

Presentation: No, Panelist: No, Guest: No

I don't have an affiliation to any institution in the present. I am in a process of transition, having moved to Philadelphia recently.

Greater transparency in financial reporting will certainly have an impact in compliance and the regulatory framework that governs securities laws. This becomes even more important in a regulatory system where proper disclosure ensures a reliable and well-policed securities environment. The question that arises under a system of a global standard for financial reporting is whether fiduciary duties will change in the face of greater disclosure, particularly when risk/return analysis is disclosed.

While many people think that greater disclosure is too burdensome for financial companies, recent events of massive investor fraud evidence the need for greater and better disclosure. As much as the Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) presents new legal challenges, there is little doubt that this is the future of financial reporting. First, a global standard for financial reporting allows markets to compete more effectively. Second, it provides a common ground for regulators and financial companies, thus fostering a boost in investor confidence. While there is no disclosure standard, fiduciaries may become risk averse by virtue of greater disclosure under standard language of financial reporting. Therefore, greater disclosure may have a stalling effect and this is a crucial issue that regulators should take into consideration. I can offer a summary of a publishable legal paper on the topic.

Bill McCarthy (Michigan State University)

Presentation: No, Panelist: No, Guest: No

I am the editor and composer of the accounting ontology work in both UN-CEFACT and in ISO. For ISO, we already have a published financial interoperability standard for open-edi -- ISO/IEC 15944-4. For UN-Cefact, I am working with the Universal Modeling Methodology team to effect a specialization module for patterned financial transactioion data.

I ran an NSF-funded financial interoperability workshop last year (with Roger). We have some interim reports that I think cover some of the same material as the workshop.

Haksu Kim (Thomson Reuters)

Presentation: yes, Panelist: Maybe, Guest: No

As you see the communication I had with Emily in Rivet, Thomson Reuters has developed a parser that translates XBRL documents into the SQL database and subsequently load the data into our legacy database. I have been coordinating the development work in terms of content, but not in technical aspect.

Brian Broesder (AssetOverSight)

Presentation: no, Panelist: Maybe, Guest: Yes

AOS is a financial research and advisory firm focused on providing its clients transparency solutions for their exposures to financial assets, from equities to esoterics. Our team consists of professionals with extensive experience in the fields of asset management, investment banking, finance, law, accounting, and technology. We work with clients to help them achieve transparency on their investment holdings in order to make more informed decisions and determine prudent courses of action. Our clients are typically institutional investors, including pension funds, endowments, banks, investment banks, fund of hedge funds, and hedge funds. We deliver our clients proprietary technology to address their transparency needs via a secure, online platform. Our interest in attending this workshop is to learn more about best practices in the industry and offer any insight we can based on our experiences. We would be happy to attend as an observer or provide our opinions as industry leaders in this field if deemed appropriate by the workshop organizers.

I would wish to bring a colleague with me for this workshop if space is available. We do not wish to make a presentation but happy to participate in any panels where we could add our insight on web-based transparency solutions within the Government and financial sector.

Rob Blake (Bowne)

Presentation: no, Panelist: No, Guest: Yes (Eric Johnson)

(missing statement)

Valid XHTML Basic 1.0 Diane Mueller, and Dave Raggett, Workshop co-Chairs

$Id: statements.html,v 1.5 2009/12/19 11:23:07 dsr Exp $