November 2016 Newsletter

Chair White, who became the 31st Chair of the SEC in April 2013, will be one of the SEC’s longest serving Chairs with nearly four years as the agency’s head. She announced that she intends to leave at the end of the Obama Administration.

Read the release: https://www.sec.gov/news/pressrelease/2016-238.html

On October 28, SEC Commissioner Kara Stein made a speech at the Big Data Conference on “A Vision for Data at the SEC” reiterating her suggestion that the SEC create a Digital Disclosure Task Force to develop a strategy for how the SEC acquires and provides data to investors and market participants. She also suggests that the SEC should create a new “Office of Data Strategy”.

Read the speech: https://www.sec.gov/news/speech/speech-stein-10-28-2016.html.

The new EDGAR filer manual draft was published with changes effective on December 12.

Download the EDGAR manual: https://www.sec.gov/info/edgar/specifications/draft-edgar-manual-v39.htm

The SEC has deployed an updated Inline XBRL viewer which includes several fixes as well as the following key changes:

• Text blocks using continuations are now displayed in their entirety.
• Highlighting for facts has been changed from dashed lines into the following:
  • Text block facts are marked with lines in the left “gutter”, with nested facts resulting in nested gutters
  • All other facts are marked with lines on the top and bottom.

These changes to the viewer have no impact on EDGAR validation.

Watch XBRL US’ archived webinar with the SEC on inline XBRL from October 5: https://xbrl.us/events/inline-161005/
Visit the SEC site to learn more about the Inline XBRL program: https://www.sec.gov/structureddata/osd-inline-xbrl.html

To demonstrate how inline XBRL can be used to reduce cost, time delays and translation risk, and to eliminate the massive duplication that takes place in corporate actions processing, XBRL US produced an inline XBRL-formatted dividend announcement. This announcement can be viewed through the inline XBRL viewer made available by the SEC.

See the message: https://xbrl.us/home/industries/corporate-actions/ixbrl-example/

XBRL US invites XBRL and solar energy subject matter experts to participate in the building of a financial standards taxonomy for the solar industry. This program, called Orange Button, is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s SunShot initiative seeking to make solar energy cost-competitive with other forms of electricity by funding cooperative research, development, demonstration, and deployment projects by private companies, universities, state and local governments, nonprofit organizations, and national laboratories to drive down the cost of solar electricity to $0.06 per kilowatt-hour.

Read about the DOE Orange Button program: http://energy.gov/eere/sunshot/orange-button-solar-bankability-data-advance-transactions-and-access-sb-data
Learn about XBRL US involvement and how you can get involved: http://xbrl.us/solar

Learn about two startup organizations that have successfully leveraged the greater timeliness, consistency and clarity of XBRL-formatted financial data. See demonstrations of offerings from idaciti and Intrinio and learn about their experiences working with XBRL data. Hear their rationale for using structured data, what other kinds of data they’d like to see in structured format, data quality issues they’ve encountered and how they handle them. Speakers include Joey French, President & Director of Product, Intrinio and Christine Tan, co-Founder, idaciti.

Register to attend: https://xbrl.us/events/170111/

Mohini Singh, Director of Financial Reporting Policy at CFA Institute shared insights from a June 2016 study conducted among the investor community on how technology can be harnessed to reform the financial reporting process end to end.

Hear the webcast: https://xbrl.us/events/cfa-161109/

XBRL US held a half-day forum on how structured data can be harnessed to vastly improve the analytical process. Speakers from the Securities and Exchange Commission, the investment community and more discussed structured data as a tool to find value in corporate filings.

Watch the videos: https://xbrl.us/events/forum-2016/

• The Domain Steering Committee meeting will be Thursday, December 1 at 4 PM ET.
• The Communications Steering Committee meeting will be Wednesday, December 28 at 10 AM ET.

XBRL US Members are invited to attend and get involved.
Email membership@xbrl.us for details.

• Learn more about the work of these committees: https://xbrl.us/committees

• Make Your Proxy Pop! December 6 at 2PM ET. Register: https://xbrl.us/events/certent-161206/
• Certent Disclosure Management Platform Review. December 8 at 2PM. Register: https://xbrl.us/events/certent-20161208/

Learn more about Certent’s offerings and XBRL leadership at https://xbrl.us/home/category/member/certent/. Certent has been an XBRL US Member since 2004.

Attend this free 60-minute webinar December 1 at 1 PM ET. Register: https://xbrl.us/events/merrill-161201/

Learn more about Merrill Corporation’s offerings and XBRL leadership at https://xbrl.us/home/category/member/merrillcorp/. Merrill has been an XBRL US Member since 2004.