On 7 May 2008, Gerrit Zalm, Chairman of the Trustees, gave the a speech at XBRL International's 17th Conference in Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
In his speech he siad that, 'In my previous capacity as Finance Minister of the Netherlands, I saw the significant potential benefits that XBRL could provide in both the public and private sectors. The Ministries of Justice and Finance jointly established the Dutch Taxonomy Project (see here for more details on this project), to cut the administrative burden placed on business.
'Our view was that by using XBRL it will be possible to collect, record, and exchange financial reports more quickly, more efficiently and more easily. At the same time, we could reduce the possibility for human error by recording data only once.
'XBRL is rapidly becoming an integral part of the world’s business reporting framework. This development in a very short period of time is a testament to the hard work of all of those involved with XBRL International—in most cases, volunteers who had a vision of the benefits of the convergence of technology and business reporting.
'I am delighted to be sharing the stage today with Christopher Cox, Chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), who deserves special credit for advancing the cause of XBRL and interactive data. The SEC has made an extraordinary commitment to establishing XBRL as the norm for financial reporting, and the rest of the world has noticed. Having the United States taking a leadership role will encourage other countries to follow and raises the possibility of improved usability and comparability of financial data across borders. (see further details on the SEC's Interactive Data/XBRL project here)
'I am also pleased with the support of the European Commission for XBRL-related activities. The European Commission provided important seed money, five years ago, which helped to promote XBRL in Europe. '
He went on to talk about the IASB's important role in developign XBRL,' Kurt Ramin and Josef Macdonald established the XBRL programme at the IASC Foundation, when few standard-setters knew or understood the benefits of XBRL. Today, Olivier Servais and his dedicated team of professional staff and interns have made great advances in enhancing the quality and usability of our taxonomy.'
He outline the current ongoing commitment of The IASC Foundation to XBRL offering that:
- 'We will continue to provide, free of cost to users, an XBRL taxonomy based upon the IFRS bound volume of standards in a timeframe consistent with the bound volume’s publication. '
- 'We will help to ensure the quality of our taxonomy by providing additional staff resources, where appropriate, and by utilising the recently created XBRL Quality Review Team and XBRL Advisory Council. '
- 'We will work with any regulatory authority that wishes to use the IFRS taxonomy. For example, we are co-operating with the European Commission and other EU authorities, the Committee of European Banking Supervisors, the Committee of European Securities Regulators, the Central Banks of Belgium and Spain, and regulatory authorities in Australia, Canada, Japan, the Netherlands and the United States, among others. '
- 'While maintaining our position that the IFRS taxonomy should be freely available, we will use our intellectual property rights to help ensure the consistency of implementation of the IFRS taxonomy throughout the world.'
'As many of you know, the IASC Foundation XBRL team has published a draft 2008 IFRS taxonomy for comment, and we are confident that a final version that takes into account the input of a wide range of parties will be ready for use shortly.' (see more details on the IFRS taxonomy project here)
Mr Zalm's full speech can be found on the IASB website here.
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