XBRL International (XII) is a standards organization currently funded by a membership model, with revenue coming from the jurisdictions and conferences. This was a fine model when the XBRL standard was young and large accounting firms and the AICPA saw the benefits from being generous with their support. Conferences were seen as a moneymaker for XBRL International, and funding was adequate to support a startup standard. XII goals were clearly definable, and “easy” to achieve, which also limited costs.

Since then the model has grown old and revenue growth has been constrained, and with each passing conference, there are quiet conversations about “how do we change the model, because this one isn’t working”.

I offer some background and a number of recommendations.

Well well well… Some sense at last, with the FAF becoming responsible for maintenance of the US GAAP taxonomy. From the very beginning of the process, the FAF (Financial Accounting Foundation and parent of the FASB, the Financial Accounting Standards Board) was expected to be involved in the development of the taxonomy, but for reasons that I’ll not go into, the FAF did not seem to be fully engaged.

For years now (well, the past two to three years) the assumed wisdom has been that the creation of a set of XBRL documents for filling with the SEC would require between 40 to 80 person hours. Lately the figure of 30 to 50 has been used, with “10% taking more than 80 hours”.

As previously reported, the 2009 US GAAP Taxonomies are referenced back to the now out of date US GAAP hierarchy. XBRL US, the non-profit consortium that supports the implementation of XBRL in the United States through the development of taxonomies relevant for use by US public and private sectors, published a Taxonomy Extension that points to the US GAAP Codification.

The XBRL U.S. GAAP Taxonomy has been updated to reflect the FASB Accounting Standards Codification and is effective for interim and annual periods ending after Sept.15, 2009, FASB and XBRL US announced Tuesday.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and XBRL US, the nonprofit consortium for XML business reporting standards, announced today that they have completed the work to revise the XBRL US GAAP Taxonomy to reflect the FASB Accounting Standards Codification(TM) that was released on July 1, 2009.

OMG(TM) today welcomed XBRL US into the OMG Model Driven Message Interoperability (MDMI) Consortium. The MDMI Consortium provides the financial industry with the means for sharing costs of adoption via a dedicated, expert team working to provide proof of business and technical value on an aggressive schedule.

XBRL US Announces Annual Conference, XBRL Financial Reporting: Advancing Transparency, Transforming the Dialogue, in New York City November 17-18, 2009.

XBRL US Announces Pacific Rim Technology Workshop & Summit, Santa Clara, California, July 28-30, 2009. Event will focus on development, maintenance and other advanced XBRL topics.

XBRL US announced that one of the key findings at its May 28, 2009 conference on corporate actions was the need for public companies to understand the current process and to follow industry-accepted standards in how corporate actions data is created and distributed.