XBRL, the Business Process, and the New Information Era

My blogging pace has slowed because I’ve been able to Tweet most urgent matters and have been spending time away from ranch work on phone calls, most of which are related to business process technology and, potentially, XBRL. This new article from Government Technology this morning just came across Twitter. It’s relevant to both my public and private sector conversations the past few weeks.

The headline, “XBRL Ends Spreadsheet Hell,” reminded me of my introduction to the technology from Mike Willis, the founding Chairman of XBRL International. The article raises issues ranging from recovery.gov reporting (which I’ve blogged previously), to data security, to the benefits of open standards, to cost savings, to globalization, and more. It seems particularly relevant now, as the XBRL community deciphers the meaning of a recent Reuters blog (you’ll need to join the XBRL Matters group on LinkedIn to see that).

This is a blog, not a link service, so here are related thoughts upon reading the A section in my dead tree format Wall Street Journal this morning:

1. The top headline on A2 is: “Scowcroft Likes Prospects for Better Ties to Russia, China.” In the spirit of transparency and honesty, I admit I laughed. Is this a WSJ parody of itself? General Scowcroft is a wonderful person, but really? His “likes” are news worthy of five square inches of newsprint in more than two million newspapers? We’ve heard the tune before. We “severely underestimated the humiliation that Russia and Russians felt at the demise of” the Soviet Union. And the U.S. should appease Russia with missile defense concessions. At least this is newer: China’s economic stimulus plan “has beat ours substantially.” Alas, if only the competition were who could spend the most fastest. No, the competition is to create an environment in which economic activity helps people. Neither the PRC nor U.S. governments has much of late of which to be proud.
2. The top headline on A4 is: “At Treasury, Big White House Role.” It’s the kind of insider’s account I might be proud of were I the reporter, but likely find fault with were I still in government. (Differences in perception between journalists and their subjects are usually fascinating.) The suggestion in the story that the White House has been slow to provide guidance “even on such mundane matters as Web-site design” caught my attention. It’s not that bureaucracy might be slow — no surprise there. It’s that the Journal stated as fact that Web-site design is “mundane.” A big part of the new administration’s “change” is supposed to be transparency, particularly Internet transparency. Nothing could be less mundane than creating new systems to provide such transparency, such as using XBRL to disclose the use of proceeds from unprecedented federal debt.

Someone called me a technologist in denial this morning. I don’t know about that — aside from coding some BASIC when I was in high school, a bit of HTML in the late 90s, and MediaWiki the past few weeks, I’m not much of a technologist. What I am is an optimist that open standards and collaboration and resulting business process improvements will mitigate a lot of challenges, ranging from U.S.-Russia relations to global economic growth. And I’m particularly happy now that a 222-year-old system of federalism is sustaining that optimism. My version of federalism is, when in doubt, decisions should be made as close to the individual level as possible, in this order: People, neighborhoods, towns, cities, counties, states, nations. Internet technology, after all, is about empowering individuals. Technology doesn’t solve problems. People solve problems. In fact, I usually prefer to call problems, “challenges.” And the most significant challenge I see at 10:50 a.m. this morning from near San Diego is helping people find and use technology to meet challenges.