Regulators worldwide are increasingly adopting data standards to improve internal efficiency, increase flexibility, and reduce reporting burden. In the US, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and since 2021, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) have established data standards implementations that are increasing their internal analyst productivity.
Attend this 60 minute session to learn how the FERC uses technology with structured, standardized data to improve data integrity and render reports with ease. Hear about the challenges and lessons learned in the FERC implementation with both internal and external users.
Speakers:
- Robert Hudson, Energy Industry Analyst, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Office of Enforcement
- Campbell Pryde, President and CEO, XBRL US
See excerpts from the discussions with the FERC below:
On choosing XBRL:
“We chose it [XBRL] over custom XML because there were a lot of efficiencies to gain in adopting XBRL and a lot of cost savings. We relied on our larger agency partners, the SEC and the FDIC who already had XBRL collections in place, and we learned from their experience and made some different choices for our system which I think paid off in the end.”
“We started with a custom XML solution because that’s what we had done in the past with all of our other collections … Honestly, the more I looked into XBRL, the more I talked to other experts and to the SEC, XBRL answered a lot of the questions already …about how to deal with time on a field.. tons of questions that we would have had to answer in a custom XML implementation were already answered with XBRL. It also provided the flexibility to allow us to add our own rules on top of it. So, it just pushed the project months forward by being able to adopt XBRL.”
On project outcome:
“We delivered this project on time and on budget… This was a glowing success for FERC because it didn’t take more time and wasn’t much more expensive than what was considered in the original spend.”
On making ongoing updates to reporting requirements:
“It also allows us to change things easier when reporting requirements change, instructions or validation rules need to change, we have internal software applications that we use that can affect the taxonomy, publish a new version, change the validation rules, and schedule them for when they need to go out.”
