Creating a Comprehensive Plan
The key to the success of this plan is to ensure that there is some agreement across all federal agencies that defines a shared common ‘open' data standard and identifies how deeply they are willing to push the tagging of data gathered into the collection processes for Recovery Act funding applications and into the financial reporting between the federal, state, and local agencies who are to be the recipients of the Recovery Act funds. Currently, the plan is to only go one level deep - the federal agency will require recipient reporting only from the primary agency receiving the funds.

For instance, a grant could be given from the Federal government to State A, which then gives a sub grant to City B (within State A), which hires a contractor to construct a bridge, which then hires a subcontractor to supply the concrete. In this case, State A is the prime recipient and would be required to report the sub grant to City B. However, City B does not have any specific reporting obligations - nor does the contractor or subcontractor - for the purposes of reporting to the Recovery.gov website.

In Spain, XBRL has been used right down to the municipal level for the reporting and monitoring of Local Government Budget Reporting; there's no reason not to encourage all levels of government agencies to increase information sharing.

Kundra's Potential Impact on XBRL
Kundra could really drive XBRL forward by insisting that all the data, right down to actual recipients, be made available as long as that data did not breach privacy and security of individuals. As accounting packages and ERP vendors like SAP are all adding XBRL export functionality to their offerings to facilitate SEC filings, it would be a natural next step to get XBRL-tagged reports all the way down to the contractor and sub-contractor levels.

Obama's team should really take a close look at the Dutch and Australian efforts to breakdown the governmental information silos with their move to a Standard Business Reporting (SBR) approach. The Dutch and Australian governments recognized the interdependent nature of government agencies and the increased need for information-sharing via a standards-based approach and are relying heavily on the XBRL standard in their eGov efforts to give their countries an extra edge of efficiency.

Kundra should court developers by providing an open standards-based, open source tool chain, giving examples and explaining in clear language how to create applications in the same manner that Apple and Facebook have done. If built on the solid open data standard foundation laid by U.S. SEC and the XBRL consortium, this should ensure - as long as data is free and open - that applications will flourish and shine some long-awaited sunlight on government spending.

Empower the world's developers to make the Recover.gov data more useful and understandable for users rather than creating reliance on Federal government contractors to develop more websites for displaying data. Developers everywhere are eager to create meaningful applications that will connect users to financial data and solve real-world problems. Free the data, and the application developers will follow.

• Google News - XBRL: Free the Data: eGov and Open Standards - CMSWire
• Google News - XBRL: Free the Data: eGov and Open Standards - CMSWire
• Google News - XBRL: Free the Data: eGov and Open Standards - CMSWire