The University of Michigan moves to modernize government financial reporting

June 17, 2022 Reason Foundation

In 2002, three academic researchers proposed applying eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) to state and local government financial reporting to make municipal data more digestible and publicly available. Now 20 years later, the University of Michigan’s Center for Local, State and Urban Policy (CLOSUP), in conjunction with industry standards group XBRL US, is releasing the first commercial-grade XBRL taxonomy for US governments. The taxonomy is a catalog of over 2,800 standardized terms for concepts that appear in government financial reports.