THE U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) continues its steady march on the road to mandatory XBRL reporting with the creation of a new office inside the agency.
David Blaszkowsky, 45, an 11-year veteran of McGraw-Hill and its Standard & Poor’s division, will quarterback the SEC-wide “disclosure modernization program” as director of the new Office of Interactive Disclosure.
Blaszkowsky is no stranger to the IR world being a member of both NIRI and CIRI, and having led S&P’s Corporate Markets and Investor Relations Services businesses.
The SEC said in a release that he will work with various industry players in the United States and around the world to push forward the use of interactive data in financial reporting.
SEC Chairman Christopher Cox said at a news conference September 25 that a new rule mandating XBRL for SEC filings could be in place in the third quarter of 2008.
AP reported that Cox has asked the heads of the SEC’s divisions for their recommendations on making XBRL mandatory. Commission members would likely decide in the second quarter of 2008 on whether to propose a rule that could go into effect by this time next year.
The timeline for possibly making XBRL mandatory came as the non-profit XBRL US consortium announced it has finished creating 15,000 elements or tags for all accounting concepts under US GAAP. The taxonomy is undergoing closed testing and should be available publicly in December.