The Future of Documents

This interesting article points out that XML-structured document formats such as XBRL (eXtended Business Reporting Language)  could ensure a much tighter reporting and control over financial institutions and companies – and maybe avoid the next financial crisis?

XBRL started in the late 90’s and defines a XML schema for the exchange of financial information between companies, accountants and the SEC – including “semantic” information, which can be extracted very easily.

Starting this year, larger companies will have to submit their reports in this document format which can be programatically analyzed and validated - this will be a dramatic change from the current submission of html, pdf, ascii or anything else, which SEC analysts had to parse and analyze manually, and in case of an error get back to the filers much more quickly. Plus, this information will be available to anyone else, since this is public information, for analysis and others.

“Semantic” XML-based vertical document formats will be the next wave for Document formats. HL7 or other formats in the Health Care domain will help dramatically increase the throughput and reduce the errors in Health Management. There are quite a few out there already, but the Future of Documents will be made of many of these vertical schemas which will be a dramatic element in improving Document-Intensive Business Processes.