The IASB core taxonomy is an XML-based specification for the Commercial and Industrial sector that allows users and suppliers of financial information to exchange financial statements across all software and technologies, including the Internet. The IASB core taxonomy, which is based on the Bound Volume of the International Accounting Standards, will help many countries, including Australia and those in Europe and Asia, to develop and implement XBRL for financial statements. Once financial information has been tagged in XBRL it allows greater interoperability for more powerful analysis and quicker discovery across all software formats and/or geographies.

The conference in Sydney is being attended by the World's largest financial, accounting and technology organizations to promote widespread corporate adoption of XBRL as a faster, cheaper and better financial reporting tool.

CPA Australia and The Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia, also members of the XBRL.org Consortium, have agreed to form a broad-based steering group in Australia that is in the process of developing a taxonomy for Australian GAAP financial statements using the core IASB taxonomy for financial statements.   

In other news, XBRL.org announced that it is forming an alliance with the GRE Working Group to jointly develop XBRL for the credit insurance industry. This alliance is being developed to support interoperability using XML -- the Extensible Markup Language for the exchange of financial data (but not limited to) the credit insurance industry and the accounting and/or financial services sectors to overcome the inefficiencies of disparate, non-integrated electronic exchange technologies. The GRE (www.grefis.org) develops UN/EDIFACT and XML standards for use by the International Credit Insurance and Information industry and is part of UN/CEFACT.

 XBRL.org also announced that representatives of the consortium would be attending the XML Interoperability Summit meeting in Orlando, Florida on December 6-8, 2001 with representatives from HR-XML, OASIS, Object Management Group (OMG), and UN/EDIFACT. The purpose of this summit meeting is to identify intersections between major horizontal and vertical industry sectors so that data can be exchanged using common XML-based tagging to promote adoption and use of this revolutionary Internet-based technology.

"We're pleased that XBRL for IASB financial statements core specification is being shared with countries attending the meeting in Sydney. Many countries in Europe and Asia are using International Accounting Standards today," said Kurt Ramin, Commercial Director, IASB and Chief Financial Officer of the XBRL International Steering Committee. "Now countries like Australia can move forward with development and adoption of XBRL for financial statements using the work developed and supported by the IASB. XBRL incorporates standardized XML data tags formats in financial statements, thereby giving a consistent approach and application of the specification to a particular country's accounting principles so that if one is reading a financial statement in Australia it has meaning in England or Japan."

"Companies tagging their financial statements in XBRL can immediately realize some of its major benefits: a streamlined financial reporting process, technology independence, full interoperability, and reliable extraction of financial information," said Mike Willis, XBRL.org Committee Chair. "XBRL empowers everyone in the financial information supply chain by enabling users to electronically import or export globally standardized statements, eliminating the need for redundant data entry while simplifying usability of the information."