Not waiting for the Federal government to set the standard for improved transparency and better communications with the public, Nevada’s Controller Kim Wallin is leading the way in adopting Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) for a number of the state’s business processes. An excellent article in Government Technology titled “XBRL Ends Spreadsheet Hell” describes the experience of Controller Kim Wallin who has become an advocate of XBRL, after wrestling with the problems of financial reporting, grant tracking and making sense of financial information for many years.
She now has XBRL pilot projects underway, including the monthly tracking of more than 60 grants of the state’s agriculture department, which has reduced time spent (at tax payer expense) from days to hours. Another project involves the tracking of debt collection, in which agencies enter their information into web-based “smart spreadsheets” that apply XBRL tags onto the reported data and can there be re-used for instant report generation.
She also intends to use XBRL to develop a Web portal where businesses only need to enter their information once, instead of doing it again for every state agency, every time they want to request a permit or complete a transaction.
Willin is registering Nevada’s work with the XBRL International organization, so other states can leverage Nevada’s leading-edge programs.
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