Business Reporting Ireland, the not for profit company established to promote the use of XBRL in Ireland has announced details of its academic competition for 2006 which is open to third level students
“We were pleasantly surprised at the interest shown in the competition last year especially as it was the first year of the competition. The standard of entry was high. Our wining entry last
year, from Gemma Kearney was impressive” said Oliver Holt, Director of Marketing and
Communication. Students are required to either write an essay on XBRL or create a working XBRL software application. Topics for an essay include the potential impact of XBRL on an Irish firm, or industry or regulatory organisation or consideration of the development of XBRL to date and the prospects for its future development with particular reference to Ireland.
The prizes to be awarded include:
First prize: €1,000
Second prize: €650
Third prize: €350
BRIL wishes to acknowledge the support of The Irish Accountancy Educational Trust in
sponsoring the cash prizes.
Closing date to register: 31 January 2006. Entries are to be submitted by 31 March 2006.
Ends - Reference: Ronan O’Brien, ICAI Communications Director, 01-6377298
Note to Editors:
BRIL is a not for profit company established in February 2004 to promote the development and use of XBRL in Ireland. It is the Irish member of XBRL international.
Membership of BRIL includes; Accenture, Anne Brady McQuillans DFK, Central Statistics
Office, Companies Registration Office, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, Farrell Grant Sparks, Fujitsu Ireland, the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland, KPMG, Microsoft Ireland,
PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Revenue Commissioners and REACH along with a number of
prominent academics. REACH is the organisation established by the Government of Ireland to develop a framework for electronic government.
XBRL
XBRL is a widely available, open, royalty free standard.
XBRL is a widely available, open, royalty free standard. Instead of treating financial information as a block of text - as in a standard internet page or a printed document - XBRL provides an identifying tag for each individual item of data. This is computer readable. For example, company net profit has its own unique tag. The introduction of XBRL tags enables automated processing of business information by computer software, cutting out laborious and costly processes of manual re-entry and comparison. Computers can treat XBRL data "intelligently": they can recognise the information in a XBRL document, select it, analyse it, store it, exchange it with other computers and present it automatically in a variety of ways for users. XBRL greatly increases the speed of handling of financial data, reduces the chance of error and permits automatic checking of information. Companies can use XBRL to save costs and streamline their processes for collecting and reporting financial information. Consumers of financial data, including investors, analysts, financial institutions and regulators, can receive, find, compare and analyse data much more rapidly and efficiently if it is in XBRL format. XBRL can handle data in different languages and accounting standards. It can flexibly be adapted to meet different requirements and uses. Data can be transformed into XBRL by suitable mapping tools or it can be generated in XBRL by appropriate software.
XBRL is already in practical use for specific purposes in several countries worldwide including
many European countries and projects are under way to introduce it in others including Ireland.
For further information see www.xbrl-ie.org
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