Melancon told a hearing of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance and Government Sponsored Enterprises that corporate reporting of financial information via quarterly and annual reports is historically based.

"Today, investors, lenders, and other users of the information need to make decisions much faster and more often based on what is currently happening and what may happen in the future, in addition to what has occurred solely in the past," he said.

The AICPA has worked for more than a decade to achieve enhanced financial reporting, Melancon said. In 1993, a report by the AICPA Special Committee on Financial Reporting was one of the first to call for a broader "bandwidth" of information from public companies to provide more useful information to investors.

"Enhanced financial reporting is no longer just a dream," said Melancon. "Coupled with enabling technologies like AICPA's initiative XBRL enhanced business reporting will provide users with the breadth of information they require at the speed they need to be successful in today's economy."

Use of XBRL is not the only component required to achieve enhanced financial reporting, Melancon told the Subcommittee. "Companies, public accounting practitioners and policymakers still need to consider many elements as the evolution towards a reporting model that meets the needs of today's markets continues to become a reality," he said.

Melancon identified two of those elements as simplifying overly complex reporting and converging international reporting and auditing standards.

Separately, the Securities and Exchange Commission said on Wednesday that 17 companies have joined the XBRL pilot program.

The XBRL initiative, backed by the XBRL Consortium, has a friend in SEC Chairman Christopher Cox. According to a report by The Wall Street Journal* Cox supports technology such as XBRL because "financial markets armed with information can discipline companies, an alternative to government regulations." In addition, investors are more informed and can easily compare companies with this system.

* "Cox Puts More Tech Into SEC." The Wall Street Journal. March 22, 2006.