Slide 1 Eurostat Unit B3 – Statistical Information Technologies XBRL pilot TF meeting – 19 April 2007 Agenda item 2 Status of X-DIS/XBRL pilot project Giuseppe Sindoni Eurostat XBRL pilot Task Force meeting 19 April 2007

Slide 2 Eurostat Unit B3 – Statistical Information Technologies XBRL pilot TF meeting – 19 April 2007 The XBRL pilot project Pilot project on the feasibility of extracting statistical data from XBRL reports Financed by the EU IDABC programme, part of Eurostat project X-DIS: XML for Data Interoperability in Statistics Context: reporting from enterprises to NSIs Initial focus: SBS Reports to the Accounting and Statistics TF Set up its own technical Task Force involving MSs TF members: BE, ES, IE, NL + DE, LU, PL, SE, UK

Slide 3 Eurostat Unit B3 – Statistical Information Technologies XBRL pilot TF meeting – 19 April 2007 Work done so far Preparatory TF meeting: –active members –focus on SBS Inventory of relevant taxonomies Mapping between local GAAPS and SBS Mapping between IFRS and SBS Decision: –base European on IFRS

Slide 4 Eurostat Unit B3 – Statistical Information Technologies XBRL pilot TF meeting – 19 April 2007 GAAP vs IFRS High degree of heterogeneity between local GAAPS across Europe IFRS likely to be adopted in most countries Local projects based on IFRS (NTP)

Slide 5 Eurostat Unit B3 – Statistical Information Technologies XBRL pilot TF meeting – 19 April 2007 The European XBRL taxonomy Modular: –core elements, common to all statistical frameworks –domain specific modules (SBS is the first one) –local extensions Based on IFRS –many concepts needed to be created from scratch

Slide 6 Eurostat Unit B3 – Statistical Information Technologies XBRL pilot TF meeting – 19 April 2007 The Insurance issue IASB has not released a workable version of IFRS-4 covering insurance enterprises => No XBRL taxonomy Better wait for an official stable release of IFRS 4 Phase II ( ?)

Slide 7 Eurostat Unit B3 – Statistical Information Technologies XBRL pilot TF meeting – 19 April 2007 The Pension Funds issue No European reporting framework for Autonomous Pension Funds The Non-Autonomous Pension Funds case comes into the Insurance one => No reference taxonomy available

Slide 8 Eurostat Unit B3 – Statistical Information Technologies XBRL pilot TF meeting – 19 April 2007 The testing phase Original aims: –testing the GAAP-based approach –testing the IFRS-based approach In both cases by extracting statistics from XBRL reports produced for other purposes The current situation forced the project to deviate from these Nevertheless interesting results were achieved

Slide 9 Eurostat Unit B3 – Statistical Information Technologies XBRL pilot TF meeting – 19 April 2007 Testing in Spain Receive XBRL data from 4 volunteer companies Rather difficult to find volunteers Taxonomy based on current questionnaires Only two companies responded within the deadline

Slide 10 Eurostat Unit B3 – Statistical Information Technologies XBRL pilot TF meeting – 19 April 2007 Testing in Belgium XBRL implementation schedule at Statistics Belgium did not fit with Eurostat deadlines Not possible to test with enterprises Decision: –help Statbel to develop a software architecture to receive XBRL data –reusable by others –part of which to be released as OSS

Slide 11 Eurostat Unit B3 – Statistical Information Technologies XBRL pilot TF meeting – 19 April 2007 Testing in the Netherlands CBS is part of the NTP project Testing the possibility of transforming NTP instances into SBS European taxonomy instances Only one instance made available by CBS => only theoretical considerations currently available

Slide 12 Eurostat Unit B3 – Statistical Information Technologies XBRL pilot TF meeting – 19 April 2007 Considerations on the testing phase Optimistic plans made at the preparatory TF meeting in March 2006 somehow proved wrong by facts Obstacles don’t seem to come from technical side Nevertheless: –possible to define taxonomies for statistics both based on GAAPs and IFRS –developing an architecture parametric wrt taxonomy is feasible –mapping conceps between statistical taxonomies is partially possible

Slide 13 Eurostat Unit B3 – Statistical Information Technologies XBRL pilot TF meeting – 19 April 2007 XBRL adoption Document to analyse the issues raised in the execution of proofs of concept Evaluate XBRL technology to work as transport layer for the collection of statistical data by NSI from reporting companies Modifications produced are beyond the technological requisites or necessities Suitability depends strongly on acceptance in other areas. Determine all the impacted areas Mention the different issues Depict a whole snapshot of implications in the XBRL adoption.

Slide 14 Eurostat Unit B3 – Statistical Information Technologies XBRL pilot TF meeting – 19 April 2007 New collection methods Investigation on the readiness of actors for the “pull” approach to data exchange Conclusions driven from testing experiences European Interoperability Framework as the reference conformance scenario Main conclusion: lack of shared business models currently hampers the applicability of the pull approach

Slide 15 Eurostat Unit B3 – Statistical Information Technologies XBRL pilot TF meeting – 19 April 2007 Questions Are companies willing to adopt XBRL? Enforcing factors? Are NSIs willing to impose XBRL? Is an incomplete taxonomy (eg. without Insurance and Pension funds) useful?