مطالعه مقایسه ای از پیاده سازی های زبان گزارشگری توسعه کسب و کار دولت الکترونیک : پتانسیل بهبود شفافیت اطلاعات و بهره وری

This study examines the e-government implementation of eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) to increase accountability and transparency in business and financial information. The business and financial information gathered in XBRL format is machine-readable and interoperable, thereby improving the ease of public dissemination and analysis. This study focuses on identifying and examining the determinants of successful XBRL implementation and draws from several bodies of literature: e-government, institutionalism, collaborative public management, regulatory compliance, and management information systems to identify determinants of successful implementation. This study selects four diverse implementations: the Netherlands, Australia, the United States, and Singapore. Empirical analysis follows a comparative case study method. The findings of this exploratory study underscore the importance of program goals and strategic alignment in achieving information transparency and efficiency, the advantage of strategies correlating to institutional setting, the critical need to provide incentives for adoption, and the usefulness of incremental implementation. The managerial and theoretical implications of these findings as well as future research opportunities are explored

The lack of financial transparency was one of the main causes of the financial crisis of late 2008. The magnitude of the financial meltdown drew the attention of public administrators and public managers around the world. Complex financial instruments, such as mortgage-backed securities and their derivatives, masked underlying risks. Motivated by financial incentives, investment institutions in the financial sector hid and passed on these risks via the creation of complex financial instruments designed to maximize short-term profits. Government has the responsibility and is well-positioned to safeguard the health of the financial sector (Khademian, 2009). Government is accountable to citizens and businesses in so far as it is responsible for maintaining the financial health of the country. Citizens and businesses regard government as the last line of defense in times of financial crises. More broadly, citizens hold government accountable for spending tax money effectively and efficiently when providing public services such as monitoring and maintaining a healthy financial sector. Government has the unique role of safeguarding the interests of the general public, rather than the financial interests of a few. Government has played the role of monitor, regulator, and rescuer in the evolution of the financial market. Thus, debates center more on how government should best be involved, not whether it should be involved (Peretz & Schroedel, 2009). This notion of government accountability over the general financial health requires that it goes beyond improving transparency of investment activities; it must also guarantee the effective and efficient monitoring of a country's economy and its implications for financial health. Many governments have passed regulations and/or administrative rules requiring that businesses and citizens report business and financial data to gather information needed for monitoring. However, the increasing number and complexity of reporting requirements have created undue administrative burdens for reporting entities and reporting costs can have substantial impacts on the economy. At the same time, the increasing amount of information collected and inconsistency in reported data may further weaken the effectiveness of government in trying to understand the financial sector and economic activities. One challenge is the lack of data standards for business and financial information. Accurate and timely business and financial information is the foundation of any informed financial and economic decisions, whether made by individuals, institutions, or government. For government, the lack of a standard business identification numbering system for various government agencies impedes the ability to make sense of financial and business information submitted by businesses. On the business side, compiling business and financial reports for various government agencies with differing data definitions and rules is burdensome. For investors, it is difficult to compare the financial performance of two businesses when, for example, the definition of “expenditure on equipment” differs across agencies. Another information challenge arises when one tries to extract financial information from various reports and try to aggregate it into a systematic/sector overview. Clearly, manually processing data extraction from paper or PDF reports is time-consuming and error-ridden. Even when financial information is collected electronically, the integration of data elements from various data sources is difficult without a common data standard. Recent developments and implementations of a standard business reporting language known as eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) have shown some initial success in addressing these challenges. At the heart of XBRL is a data dictionary (taxonomy) that standardizes the financial terms used. Such standardization allows for meaningful comparison of financial information across businesses and allows for the aggregation of financial information across a business sector for monitoring purposes. Moreover, such a taxonomy enables the development of software applications to make the financial information machine-readable. Once stored in XBRL format, businesses can transmit the information electronically to government for reporting purposes. Hence, the burden of manual processing can be significantly reduced. Government, when using XBRL as a standard, can be more efficient in gathering and analyzing financial and business information. XBRL also allows for business rules to be embedded, which enables automatic validation of business rules in financial reports. Such automation is a significant efficiency gain, as seen, for example, in the U.S. FDIC's implementation project (Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC), 2006). Advancements in information technology offer opportunities for improving the collection and dissemination of financial and business information. Web 2.0 technologies form a participatory platform to socially construct knowledge and online communities (Lytras et al., 2009 and O'Reilly, 2005). These technologies allow citizens to share information on financial institutions and government accountability. For example, the U.S. government's website Recovery.gov tracks the spending of government funds disbursed under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and allows citizens to report fraud. Moreover, the development of the semantic Web (Web 3.0) further complements the participatory platform to make the Web more of a database/software in which data online are standardized and machine readable to organize around topics of interest (Devedžić, 2006 and Siegel, 2009). Such a semantic web has the potential to let citizens assess financial risks of government policies by combining relevant data sets and harnessing the power of online data processing and analysis. XBRL is a data standard (taxonomy) that lays the foundation for business and financial information to be machine-readable and standardized for meaningful comparison. Once XBRL is made available on the Web, it has the potential for introducing a new era of open government. To date, there has not been enough scholarly attention on improving transparency in business and financial information and on realizing efficiency gain in collecting, analyzing, and disseminating such information. Scholars recognize the importance of transparency in preventing financial crises (Khademian, 2009) and the potential of applying information and communication technologies to improve transparency and open government (Bertot et al., 2010 and Dawes and Helbig, 2010). However, there has only been limited research on the actual e-government XBRL implementations that have the potential to increase transparency and efficiency in business and financial information. Moreover, the few published studies on XBRL implementation are limited to a single country such as the study of XBRL implementation in the Netherlands (Bharosa, van Wijk, Janssen, de Winne, & Hulstijn, 2011) and the one on the U.S.'s SEC (Debreceny et al., 2005). This study aims to fill this knowledge gap. The main contribution is to advance the theory and practice of XBRL e-government implementation by focusing on the implementation of XBRL rather than on discussing its benefits. It covers two main types of XBRL implementation: a) single agency implementation and b) cross-agency standard business reporting (SBR). The SBR's objective is for businesses to conduct one-stop electronic reporting for all regulatory compliance following standardized XBRL taxonomy. The denotation of XBRL/SBR is to indicate the inclusion of XBRL implementation in the context of SBR. Such empirical investigation is grounded in a broad base of literature ranging from public administration to information systems. Additionally, this study contributes to generation of a preliminary list of e-government XBRL implementation strategies in various countries by going beyond a single country to compare implementations of four different countries. Therefore, the primary research question is “What are the determinants of successful XBRL/SBR implementation in increasing the potential of information transparency and efficiency in managing business and financial data?” The next section begins with a basic definition of information transparency and efficiency as the main outcomes or policy objectives. It then draws from various bodies of literature to identify the factors affecting successful e-government implementation of XBRL. The empirical investigation of these factors starts with data and methods, and then four cases of XBRL implementation are examined to explore the relevance these factors and their nuances have for different contexts. Discussions and the conclusion focus on the implications and limitations of the findings and opportunities for future research.

Analysis of these four cases of implementation suggests that information transparency and efficiency gain tend to be a matter of program intent. For example, the limited information transparency achieved for the Netherlands and Australian cases probably stems from the emphasis on efficiency gains resulting from reducing reporting burdens. On the other hand, one of the reasons the SEC scores high on both efficiency gain and information transparency may be due to the clear objectives driving its XBRL implementation. Moreover, a clear alignment between XBRL implementation and the agency's core mission plays to the SEC's advantage. This preliminary finding suggests that public managers need to have a clear sense of goals for XBRL implementation in particular and e-government implementation in general. Making information transparency and efficiency in information gathering and dissemination a priority would help attain these program goals. This finding also underscores the necessity of better alignment of implementation goals with the core mission of the main implementing agency. The theoretical implication of this finding points toward the prominent role played by institutional constraints and the notion of path dependence, which confirms the main arguments of institutionalism, even in this new context of XBRL implementation. A government-wide implementation requires a high level of political support and resource input due to inherent complexity and potential conflicts resulting from turf battles. Although the potential benefits could be large, the initial investment is substantial and must be sustained over 3–5 years to reach a critical mass of adopters and have a positive return on the investment. The challenge facing the Netherlands and Australia comes from getting and sustaining this level of support. By contrast, a single agency implementation, as in the cases of the U.S. SEC and Singapore's ACRA, is relatively manageable. Thus, the managerial implication points toward the need to budget ample resources over a sustained period of time. It is also important to clearly articulate the projected returns on the resource investment to sustain political and managerial support. Thus, this preliminary finding reinforces the argument for the importance of political and managerial support in successful e-government implementation, especially in a more diverse and networked setting. These cases also indicate that a proper incentive scheme for adoption is essential in achieving the desired outcome of e-government implementation. The U.S. SEC's experience can be seen as a natural experiment. In this case, mandatory reporting is required to provide the needed incentives for publicly traded companies to adopt XBRL. The challenge faced by Australia and the Netherlands in getting voluntary adoption also suggests the need to structure an incentive scheme to shape business adoption decisions. Public managers could learn from this experience by focusing their efforts on developing an incentive structure for businesses of all sizes. Making the use of XBRL mandatory is an effective means of tipping the cost/benefit calculation in favor of adoption. Also another helpful strategy is to work closely with the software industry to lower development costs and thus reduce service fees associated with XBRL software programs. The preliminary finding points toward the limitations of using voluntary programs as policy instruments. Such a strategy would unlikely produce the network effect necessary for generating the benefits of XBRL. The last preliminary research finding supports the deployment of an incremental strategy for successful implementation. The cases examined here suggest the need for an incremental approach. The use of pilot projects, extensive collaboration with stakeholders, and phase-in implementation are all helpful. These cases together offer public managers a rich menu of incremental implementation strategies such as moving from partial reporting to full reporting, working first with large businesses then with small ones, and beginning with voluntary and later switched to mandatory reporting. Here, the theoretical underpinning underscores the importance of change management, especially in the context of complex e-government implementation. It is important to note that this study is exploratory because of the quality and details of case information and the evolving nature of XBRL/SBR implementations. This study relied primarily on published government information due to the constraint of data availability. Such reliance raises concern about validity and reliability that are usually strengthened by having multiple information sources and more details. Moreover, the information on transparency and efficiency gain is preliminary as it provides generic statements or estimates. The related complication is the ongoing nature of the national XBRL implementations examined. Future studies can examine the extent of the long term impact of XBRL implementation in the area of efficiency gain and information transparency. It is relatively early to judge the performance of XBRL/SBR implementation in Australia, particularly with regard to realizing the transparency potential. Another area of future research can examine, in different contexts, the relationships between the e-government implementation factors/strategies and the outcomes mentioned above. This would increase our understanding of why and how some of the proposed strategies could be effective. Moreover, future studies can improve validity and reliability by conducting a fuller investigation of the perspectives of various stakeholders such as businesses and other collaborating government agencies. Better and more detailed data on transparency and efficiency as well as on other determinants of successful implementation can aid in the effort of increasing validity and reliability.