Participation
The Workshop is free of charge and open to anyone, subject to review of their statement of interest, and is not restricted to members of W3C and XBRL International. The Workshop materials will be made publically available, including statements of interest and presentations provided by the participants. See the requirements for participation.
Latest News
The Workshop is now over, and the Chairs would like to thank XBRL International and W3C for their assistance in organizing the meeting, and the FDIC for hosting. The following information is now available:
Background
The current global crisis spotlights the need for greater transparency in both corporate and government financial reporting supply chains along with accurate and timely linked data. W3C and XBRL International invite you to attend a workshop to facilitate a discussion about improving access to financial data on the Web.
Workshop participants will collectively help to identify opportunities and challenges for interactive access to business and financial data expressed in XBRL and related languages. The extensible business reporting language (XBRL), is being widely adopted all around the world, and is set to become the standard way of recording, storing and transmitting business financial information. The creation, distribution, and consumption of Financial Content across the web touch millions of users and affects business decisions that have global implications.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has mandated that US public companies file reports in XBRL, starting with the largest companies in mid-2009. Other countries have similar plans, e.g. in the UK, thousands of companies already report in XBRL, which will be mandatory in 2011. In Asia, XBRL has gained early adoption in capital markets with Stock Exchanges in China, Japan, Singapore and South Korea all mandating the use of XBRL. Governments in Australia, the Netherlands and New Zealand, have made commitments to reduce corporate compliance burden using XBRL as part of Standard Business Reporting efforts.
Much of the effort on XBRL so far has gone into developing the standards and taxonomies of reporting concepts, and on helping companies with preparing filings. Comparatively little effort has been spent on how to exploit the expected flood of data. It is now time to take a good look at the opportunities and challenges for interactive access to XBRL data at all stages of the reporting pipeline.
The US Transparency in Government Act of 2008 seeks to make the work of Congress and the executive branch more transparent by creating laws and regulations that would bring more information online and available to the public in a timely manner. XBRL and broader semantic-based technologies have great potential in realizing the opportunities for public access to information about government operations. The raw data needs to be supplemented with bindings to the semantics as a basis for comparability.
What data architectures are required to support this and to realize the goals of transparency? What is needed to create an ecosystem of value-added services around this flood of data? What lessons can be learned for creating shared vocabularies for this data? How can the costs for preparing data be kept in line with the value of the benefits?
Workshop Goals
The goal of this workshop is to identify opportunities and challenges for interactive access to financial data expressed in XBRL and related languages, and the broader opportunities for semantic technologies. What are the use cases? Who are the stakeholders? What are the potential roadblocks and how can they be addressed? How can new applications be created based upon integrating XBRL with other sources of information?
The main outcome of the workshop will be the publication of a report that will serve as a guide for further work in both W3C and XBRL International.
Scope of the Workshop
The workshop is aimed at people with an involvement in managing financial data in one way or another, or who have an academic interest in how this is done. The workshop will combine a mix of business and technical topics relevant to the above goals.
Who should attend?
You should consider participating in this workshop if you are in one of the following communities:
- Government organizations seeking to fulfil the promise of transparency and open government operations through the use of semantic-based technologies such as XBRL
- Regulators, who need an internal tool for reviewing XBRL filings and provide a value-added service for investors and other constituents to make use of XBRL data; and
- 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.
- Auditors, who need to bring together XBRL and non-XBRL data in a rich visual environment and then manipulate and abstract information for complete review, analysis and attestation of corporate filings;
- Financial journalists, analysts, investors and other data users who want instant access to the accurate figures they need for real time reporting to enhance their own and their clients’ decision making processes.
- XBRL technology vendors and developers
- Companies seeking to exploit XBRL internally
- Academic researchers with an interest in transparent reporting
Requirements for Participation
To help with planning, we need you to let us know as soon as possible if you are interested in attending by sending the following information to <team-xbrlws-submit@w3.org>:
- Name, organization and contact details
- A brief (single paragraph) statement of interest
- Your intent to submit a statement of interest, or to attend as an observer
- Whether you wish to bring a collegue (a combined limit of two people per organization)
- Whether or not you wish to make a presentation during the workshop
- Whether or not you are willing to serve on a panel during the workshop
- Any other agenda suggestions
Statements of interest will be the basis for the discussions at the workshop. Each organization or individual wishing to participate must submit a statement of interest by email to <team-xbrlws-submit@w3.org> by 18 September 2009.
Statements of interest should:
- Explain the participant's interest in the workshop
- Explain their view point
- Include concrete examples of their suggestions
Statements of interest should be written in English. Examples may be illustrated with non-English languages with an English explanation. All submissions should be 1 to 5 pages in length, although they may link to longer versions or appendices. Allowed formats are valid HTML or XHTML, PDF, or plain text. Papers in any other format (including invalid HTML/XHTML) may be returned with a request for correct formatting.
You can view examples from previous W3C workshops:
- Oil and Gas, 9-10 December 2008
- Social Networking, 15-16 January 2009
Statements of interest will be published on the public Web page of the workshop. Submitting a statement of interest comprises a default recognition of these terms for publication. The program committee reserves the right to decline submissions that are not deemed relevant to the workshop's stated goals.
The Program Committee will ask the authors of particularly salient submissions to explicitly present their position at the workshop to foster discussion. Presenters will be asked to make the slides of the presentation available on the workshop home page in HTML, PDF, or plain text.
See the schedule below for submission and registration deadlines.
Topics:
This workshop will focus on opportunities and challenges for interactive access to business financial data made possible by XBRL. Possible topics include, but are not limited to the following:
- The relationships between XBRL and the Semantic Web, e.g. XBRL taxonomies and OWL ontologies.
- Combining XBRL with other sources of information on the Web and the challenges this raises.
- The challenges in analysing data across taxonomy versions, and across jurisdictions for companies operating in global markets.
- The challenges posed by taxonomy extensions and widespread variations in practices used for preparation of XBRL data.
- Next steps for rendering XBRL, and associated changes in best practices, taxonomies and standards.
- The desire for greater transparency, and the role of non-financial reporting, e.g. sustainability, human capital, customer relations, partnerships, the environment, innovation and corporate governance.
- The importance of shared vocabularies as a basis for comparability.
- What data architectures are appropriate and how can the costs of preparing data be kept in line with the benefits?
and with a focus on how these issues impact the following :
- What tools are needed to reap the benefits from data released about government operations?
- Investor Analytics—what do we want from XBRL?
- How XBRL could boost investment in cash strapped SMEs?
- Credit risk assessments for loan reports and applications.
- Internal management reports that integrate data from different operating divisions with different accounting systems.
- Analysis of business reports by all types of regulators (such as tax and financial authorities, banks and governments).
- Streaming Analytics on Financial content.
- Impact of Cloud Computing on Financial Queries.
- Deploying new Eco-systems for Financial Information Consumers.
- The role of consumer created content as part of an eco-system of value-added services for reported data.
Participation:
Participation will be governed by the following:
- To ensure maximum diversity, the number of participants per organization will be limited.
- W3C membership is not required to participate in this workshop.
- Workshop sessions and documents will be in English.
- Attendees are required to submit a statement of interest.
Workshop Organization
Workshop Chairs
- Diane Mueller (XBRL
International),
- Vice Chair, XBRL International Board of Directors
- Chair, Technical Working Group on Rendering
- Member, XBRL International Best Practices Board
- Dave Raggett (W3C)
- W3C lead for financial data and the Semantic Web
- Member, XBRL International Standards Board
Facility Hosting Contact
- Richard Campbell (FDIC)
Program Committee:
The program committee consists of:
- Richard Campbell, FDIC
- Kendall Clark, Clark & Parsia
- Mills Davis, Project10x
- Walter Hamscher, US Securities and Exchange Commission
- Neal Hannon, AAA Interactive Data Strategies
- David vun Kannon, Deloitte & Touche LLP
- Christian Leibold, Semantic Technology Institute, Innsbruck, Austria
- Josef Macdonald, Ernst & Young
- Diane Mueller, JustSystems
- Yossef Newman, Deloitte
- Brand Niemann, US Environmental Protection Agency
- Dave Raggett, W3C
- Titi Roman, Semantic Technology Institute, Innsbruck, Austria
- Ben Szekely, Cambridge Semantics
- Hugh Wallis, XBRL International
The program committee will review statements of interest to select which people to invite to give presentations, and to come up with the workshop agenda.
Schedule:
The workshop program will run from 9am to 5 pm on Monday, 5 October, and from 9 am to 5pm on Tuesday, 6 October 2009. Please plan on arriving soon after 8:30am to enable a prompt start to each day's proceedings.
Venue:
The workshop will take place in the FDIC training facilities in the L. William Seidman Center in Virginia Square at 3501 Fairfax Drive in Arlington, Virginia. It is easily accessible by public transportation at the Virginia Square Metro stop on the Orange Line. Parking space is very restricted, so you are recommended to arrive by metro or taxi.
Some nearby hotels:
- Hilton Arlington, $109 to $249, 950 North Stafford Street, Arlington, Virginia 22203, +1-703-528-6000
- Holiday Inn Arlington at Ballston, $229-$339, 4610 N. Fairfax Dr, Arlington, VA 22203
- Westin Arlington Gateway, $400-$450, 801 North Glebe Road, Arlington, Virginia 22203, +1 (703) 717-6200
Important Dates
Date | Event |
---|---|
As soon as possible | Notify us of your interest in participating in the workshop, see the requirements for participation. |
18 September 2009 | Deadline for submission of your statement of interest, see the requirements for participation. |
11-18 September 2009 | Acceptance notifications and registration instructions sent. Program and accepted statements of interest posted on the workshop website. |
25 September 2009 | Deadline for registration. Please note this is a firm deadline. |
5 October 2009 | Workshop Begins (9 AM) |
6 October 2009 | Workshop Ends (5pm) |
Acknowledgements
W3C and XBRL International wish to thank the FDIC for hosting the Workshop and the members of the program committee for their assistance in reviewing submissions and help with planning the agenda.