17 May 2012 -- XBRL International (XII) is pleased to announce the appointment of Ashu Bhatnagar as Director of Standards and Practices, effective 21 May 2012. Bhatnagar will be responsible for providing strategic guidance and operational leadership to the Technical Boards and Working Groups of XII as well as developing key practice guidance for adopters of the XBRL specification.

“Ashu’s experience in creating widely utilized XBRL tools and services for the US, UK, Indian and emerging markets is important as the specification reaches a more mature stage and becomes more widely adopted for all facets of business reporting,” said Tony Fragnito, CEO of XII. “He will play an integral role in maintaining XII’s leadership role in providing both technical and business process information, resources and guidance to the developers and users of XBRL.”

In addition to managing the process for the ongoing development and maintenance of the XBRL specification, Ashu Bhatnagar will also be responsible for advancing a comprehensive program to create practice guidance resources for the XBRL community that identifies emerging trends and provides key information to the XBRL community on a broad range of technical and market issues.

Ashu Bhatnagar most recently served as the CEO of Good Morning  Research - SoftPark USA, which serves financial analysts and investment professionals globally with tagging, uploading and distribution of investor presentations, annual reports and company financials.  He also developed, launched and managed FreeXBRLonline.com, which provides XBRL conversion services and XBRL tagging software for regulatory filings such as Corporation Tax - Accounts and Computations for HMRC UK, and Annual Accounts filings for companies under mandate by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, India.

Prior to that Ashu Bhatnagar was Vice President and Product Manager of Modelware Web at Morgan Stanley. And before that he has twenty years of experience in product development and product management at JPMorgan Chase, Citibank and Digital Equipment Corporation.

Ashu Bhatnagar holds a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Rhode Island, and a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology. He also did graduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and as an Adjunct Faculty taught graduate courses in Advanced Computer Architectures and Parallel Processing at the University of Massachusetts.

Mr. Bhatnagar has presented on Semantic XBRL topics at several International forums, including W3C/XII Workshop 2009, SemTech 2010, 15th International Conference on Information Quality 2010, The Columbia Institute for Tele-Information (CITI) at Columbia Business School 2010, and 5th MIT Information Quality Industry Symposium 2011.

(3 May 2012, Helsinki) – XBRL International (XII) today announced that XBRL Finland, a joint venture of key public and private organizations aimed at raising awareness of the XBRL standard (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) in Finland has been granted Provisional Jurisdiction status. By naming XBRL Finland as a Jurisdiction, XII is recognizing the group as Finland’s representative to the global consortium that maintains the XBRL standard and supports the adoption of this business reporting standard.

“XII is pleased to welcome Finland to the community of financial, business and technology leaders that are responsible for XBRL – the world’s leading language for the sharing of business information,” said Anthony Fragnito, CEO of XBRL International. “Finland has long been a technology leader and a pioneer in areas such as e-invoicing. XII’s efforts to further the global adoption of XBRL will benefit from their expertise and insight.”

The authorities related to financial reporting (National Board of Patents and Registration, Tax Administration, Federation of Finnish Financial Services) have recognized the value and possibilities of XBRL. They perceive the XBRL standard very positively and also as necessary to secure the competiveness of Finnish companies. “The main task of the National Board of Patents and Registration is to maintain and supply accurate and timely information about the Finnish companies to different stakeholders. The nationwide adoption of XBRL in Finland will bring significant improvements to the quality of the reports and also substantially speed up the processing time of the financial reports thus providing more timely information for the end users.” summarizes Olli Koikkalainen from the National Board of Patents and Registration of Finland.

“XBRL Finland shows that with a strong vision and the right business case it is possible to mobilize key stakeholders in financial reporting to join forces to support the adoption of XBRL,” states Dave van den Ende, chairman of XII’s Membership Development Committee.

XBRL Finland’s key objective for the coming year of will be to create the taxonomy for financial statements according to Finnish GAAP (FAS, Finnish Accounting Standards). After that, the FAS taxonomy will be tested and arrangements will be made with regulatory authorities to start receiving financial reports in XBRL. The goal is begin XBRL filings in 2014. Other activities for XBRL Finland will be to raise awareness about XBRL, educating different stakeholders and acting as a link between XBRL International and developments throughout the Nordic Region.

“We are very excited to have been able to gather together all the central organizations regarding business reporting to our consortium. Joint work to initiate XBRL reporting in Finland has already started and the work is progressing at a good pace,” stated Elina Koskentalo and Esko Penttinen from XBRL Finland.

About XBRL Finland
XBRL Finland is a joint venture of key public and private organizations. Aalto University is the host organization for XBRL Finland consortium and the founding members are: National Board of Patents and Registration, Tax Administration, Federation of Finnish Financial Services, Association of Finnish Accounting Firms, Aalto University, KPMG, PwC, Tieto, Aditro, Asiakastieto, Kauppalehti Tietopalvelut (Balance Consulting), Finnish Information Society Development Centre, Åbo Akademi, Hanken, IBM Finland and Deloitte.

(25 April 2012) The US House of Representatives passed the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act, or DATA Act (H.R. 2146), by a voice vote with strong bipartisan support. The bill to strengthen the transparency of federal government spending was sponsored by Oversight and Government Reform committee chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) and ranking member Elijah Cummings (D-MD) and 13 other representatives.

(17 April 2012) -  Call for listed IFRS filers to participate in a voluntary XBRL Detailed Tagging Task Force - Applications due 30 April

Together with the Industry Practice Project, the IFRS Foundation is establishing a task force to examine detailed XBRL tagging in IFRS financial statements, and is looking to work directly with preparers from public companies from different industries and regions. [1] The Foundation is re-initiating this task force as a follow-up to the Detailed Tagging Task Force (DTTF) that was set up last year and which proved to be very successful and mutually beneficial.

Companies interested in participating in the task force are invited to express their interest in writing to Olivier Servais, Director of XBRL Activities, IFRS Foundation, 30 Cannon Street, London EC4M 6XH, United Kingdom; orby email to oservais@ifrs.org

The IFRS Foundation will accept applications until 30 April.

Objectives
The aim of the task force is for public companies[2] to produce fully-tagged XBRL financial statements and selected footnotes using the 2012 IFRS Taxonomy.
The task force will be a means for the IASB XBRL team to engage directly with filers and obtain feedback on the ease of use and completeness of the IFRS Taxonomy. Your input is very important as it will contribute to the setting of a high quality taxonomy that meets the needs of all stakeholders.

Participants
The IFRS Foundation is seeking participation from preparers of financial statements for public companies who report in IFRS. Participation from companies operating in all industries and geographical regions are welcome.

Time line
Companies interested in participating in the task force should express their interest by 30 April. Task force participants will be chosen and notified by 7 May. The first meeting of task force participants will take place on 14 May by teleconference.
It is expected that participating companies will have or gain sufficient knowledge to be able to produce detailed XBRL filings by the end of October, which is when the initiative will be completed.

Process
Participating companies will:
Examine the main statements and major sections within the notes to the financial statements - such as operating segments, share-based payments, property, plant and equipment - and the corresponding parts of the IFRS Taxonomy that relate to disclosures within those sections, with support and feedback from the IFRS Foundation XBRL Team.
Apply IFRS Taxonomy tags to financial statement disclosures either in Microsoft Excel or Word or directly in XBRL, again with support and feedback from the IFRS Foundation XBRL Team.
Generate an XBRL file using their preferred software.

Resource requirements
Participants will be expected to examine each of their financial statement note disclosures in detail, to undertake the tagging process and to share the results of this work with other participants via fortnightly one-hour conference calls and two one-day meetings which will take place in London.

Benefits for participating companies
Although participating companies will retain ultimate responsibility for preparing the XBRL filings, they will be working directly with the authors of the IFRS Taxonomy who will provide assistance throughout the XBRL tagging and document creation process on tagging and disclosure choices;
Compliance with filing rules and regulatory requirements; Filing review and rendering.
Participating companies will also be able to share and learn from the filings and from the experiences of other participants.

What software should be used?
The IFRS Taxonomy 2012 has been developed and tested using a number of XBRL tools. However the IFRS Foundation does not recommend or endorse particular products. The IFRS Foundation XBRL Team is familiar with most XBRL products that are currently available on the market and is therefore happy to work with the software tools chosen by participating companies.
Will the filings be made public?
All information and filings will remain confidential, and will not be shared without the consent of participating companies. However, the IFRS Foundation encourages participating companies to publish their filings.

Contact details
Companies interested in participating in the task force are invited to express their interest:
in writing to Olivier Servais, Director of XBRL Activities, IFRS Foundation, 30 Cannon Street, London EC4M 6XH, United Kingdom; or
by email to oservais@ifrs.org
The IFRS Foundation will accept applications until 30 April.

[1] The Industry Practice Project focuses on activity specific disclosure whereas the Detailed Tagging Detailed Task Force considers financial disclosures that are common across all activities.
[2] Intentionally, we shall only interact with issuers, neither with service companies nor with software vendors