Letter from Congressman Issa to SEC© regarding XBRL Implementation

In this letter, the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform addresses concerns of the SEC’s adoption of the “Interactive Data Rule” that was issued in 2009.

In a letter addressed to the chair of the SEC, Mary Jo White, the Committee highlights major concerns that Congress has with the implementation of XBRL as the standard for data format and analysis for the SEC© and concludes the letter with a formal request for information by the SEC© in order to alleviate the aforementioned concerns. The letter reviews the government wide move towards structured data for a variety of federal reports and other materials with the understand that interactive data can reduce costs for filing and analysis, improve disclosure data quality, and provide greater transparency and access to financial information. The Committee emphasizes three main points that show the SEC’s progress on the Interactive Data rule is stagnant. The points are: the agency (1) does not fully utilize the structure financial data it already collects; (2) continues to buy-back from commercial databases the same data it collects from filers; and (3) has failed to address concerns about the quality of structured-data filings. For more details on where the SEC© has failed to meet the standards of XBRL implementation, please click the hyperlink at the beginning of the post.