At least one-third of the 90,000 state and local governments in the United States produce annual financial reports. Due to the lack of standards for these reports, the ability to aggregate data and compare financial performance of governmental entities is limited. The Standard Government Reporting Working Group seeks to address this problem by designing schemas and XBRL implementation(s) for open data reporting of state and local government actual financial results.
The scope of work includes Annual Comprehensive Financial Reports (ACFRs), Single Audit packages, state-mandated Annual Financial Reports, and responses to relevant Census Bureau financial surveys. The group seeks to support relevant institutions gaining technical understanding and establishing best practices for disclosure modernization for the benefit of US state and local governments, as well as public pension systems.
Why now?
In March 2018, Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed HB 1073, legislation which establishes the Florida Open Financial Statement System, and enables the state CFO to build XBRL taxonomies for state, county, municipal, and special district financial filings. The XBRL taxonomy to support this initiative is underway.
Separately, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adopted the Inline XBRL technical specification that combines an HTML and an XBRL document, for reporting by operating companies and mutual funds. Inline XBRL is an ideal tool for ACFR reporting, as it can transform a state’s ACFR into a single document which is both computer-readable and human-readable.
Now is the time to leverage the momentum to build greater efficiency into state and local government reporting to benefit all stakeholders.
Get Involved
Sponsoring members of the Working Group have logos listed in the box to the right on this page. Observers to the Working Group include NASACT (the National Association of State Auditors, Comptrollers and Treasurers) and the U.S. Census, among other organizations.
Members of this XBRL US Working Group have the following skillsets:
- Technical expertise related to taxonomy development and creation of inline XBRL instance documents
- Knowledge of US State and Local Government Accounting Standards
- Familiarity with fiscal health indicators used by practitioners and academics to assess US state and local governments
- Ability to identify similar or related work that is being done in other Working Groups or by other organizations
Working group members are involved in taxonomy development and review, instance document preparation, identifying and engaging subject matter experts in government accounting and reporting; and building awareness among state agencies and legislators. Learn how you can become a contributing member of the group to influence the standards developed by emailing info@xbrl.us.
Governments
- Standard Government Reporting
- Legislation
- Updates
ACFR Taxonomy Resources
Documentation and Downloads:
- Authorized Use / Legal Notice
- GRIP Taxonomy Viewer
(requires free account) || Viewer Guide (PDF) - ACFR Taxonomy Architecture Document - (June, 2019)
- ACFR-Single Audit Taxonomy Guide - (September, 2020)
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