The Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy (CLOSUP) has been partnering with XBRL US, to work with the City of Flint to explore whether a new fiscal reporting mechanism for governmental entities can help create transparency—and prevent future financial crises.
Stephanie Leiser, CLOSUP's Local Fiscal Health Project leader, recently joined Marc Joffe from the Cato Institute, Campbell Pryde, President and CEO, XBRL US, and Robert Widigan, Chief Financial Officer for the City of Flint, to discuss government data standards, how governments can create their own machine-readable financial statements, and the impact the recently-passed Financial Data Transparency Act (FDTA) could have on government entities. Most importantly, they stressed the importance of machine-readable data standards to state and local government entities for reducing costs and increasing access to time-sensitive information for policy making.
"We have a much bigger perspective on the value of open data standards and the costs and benefits of using them for governments," Leiser said. "And ultimately our goal is around transparency and good government and getting the data that we need to really improve our understanding of government fiscal health."
Read more about the webinar in The Bond Buyer.
