Statistics New Zealand and XBRL

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Statistics New Zealand and XBRL

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Presentation Outline

• Overview of Statistics New Zealand and the
  existing financial data collection framework
• Who is Statistics NZ
• What are our financial data collections
• Compliance costs
• Trying to be flexible in our data collection
  strategies
• How XBRL will fit into or even change this
  framework
• External drivers for XBRL uptake
• Benefits of XBRL in a data collection context
• Taxonomies
• An example of XBRL being used to meet survey
  requirements
• Looking forward

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Overview of Statistics New Zealand

• Statistics New Zealand (Te Tari Tatau) is a
  government department and New Zealand's national
  statistical office
• The Statistics Act 1975 sets out the Government
  Statistician's role in, and responsibilities for,
  all official statistics
• To meet its responsibilities under the Act,
  Statistics New Zealand's main roles are to
• Provide leadership for New Zealand's official
  statistics.
• Be the key contributor to the collection,
  analysis and dissemination of official statistics
  relating to New Zealand's economy, environment
  and society.
• Build and maintain trust in official statistics.
• Ensure that official statistics are of high
  integrity and quality and are equally available
  to all.

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Top Down Review

• Statistics NZ, Treasury and State Services
  Commission participated in a review of New
  Zealands official statistics system
• Main initiatives to come out of this review
• Establishing a new model for official statistics
• Leadership by the Government Statistician
• Monitoring respondent burden across Government
• Establishing an Independent Statistical Advisory
  Committee
• Establishing a research data archive

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Compliance Costs of Surveys

• Statistics NZ is acutely aware of the compliance
  burdens facing our survey respondents
• Because of New Zealands small size even medium
  sized business can be key contributors in sample
  surveys
• Some industries are surveyed more intensely than
  others
• Some ballpark figures that relate to Statistics
  NZs direct surveying activity
• 130000 enterprises directly surveyed each year
  across 32 surveys
• Paper forms average between 25 and 30 minutes to
  complete
• Approximately 60000 hours or 7500 working days or
  50 person years!!

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Compliance Reduction Strategies

• Small businesses
• Reduce compliance through use of administrative
  data
• Simple standard XBRL based templates
• Large businesses
• Tailored collection options
• XBRL Initiators
• Medium businesses
• Easy to supply options from standard business
  records
• XBRL omnibus reporting for multiple surveys

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Financial Data Collections

• Financial data is mostly collected to produce
  National Accounts statistics which are based
  around an International Framework
• The Annual Enterprise Survey is the largest
  comprehensive annual financial survey of New
  Zealand businesses.
• 20500 direct survey units supplemented by 225000
  IR10 units
• Collects income, expenditure and balance sheet
  information from industry groups within the
  economy
• Less detailed subannual financial information
  collected by industry (manufacturing, retail and
  wholesale)

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Accepting Alternatives to the Questionnaire

• The primary source for direct survey data is
  paper forms
• The two main alternatives are electronic reports
  and hardcopies of accounts
• Accounts are often actively solicited from
  potential non-respondents in order to achieve
  corporate response rates
• Electronic reports are most often MS Excel
  spreadsheets
• Often larger respondents reporting for a number
  of survey units
• Statistics NZ has strict guidelines on the
  acceptance of electronic data in terms of both
  security and authentication
• Also take data over the phone and sent by email

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Problems Accepting Ad Hoc Formats

• Accounts
• High internal processing overhead
• Do not always match survey variables
• Consolidation issues
• Spreadsheets
• Often have unique layouts and formats
• Need to be customised by Statistics NZ to fit
  into predefined bulk loading processes
• Not all questions answered (eg GST, reporting
  period)
• Phone and email
• Often unstructured and has gaps
• More likely to be an estimate or a guess
• Email poses security risks

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XBRL Environment

• Compliance cost
• International Accounting Standards
• Mandatory in NZ from December 2007
• Early adoption from December 2005
• Increasing number of offshore collection units
• New Zealand as a branch office
• Cross Agency reporting
• Opportunity for single point reporting - IRD, CO,
  NZX, etc

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XBRL - Benefits for Data Suppliers

• Assuming that ...
• XBRL is integrated with accounting/reporting
  software
• Everyone is using the same taxonomies
• Information may only need to be rendered once
• A single report could meet the requirements of
  multiple agencies
• The effort required to produce reports could be
  greatly reduced
• After initial set up reports could be generated
  automatically
• Changes in Statistics NZ requirements could feed
  through automatically to collections

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XBRL - Benefits for Statistics NZ

• Timeliness
• Data could be made available right at the end of
  the reporting period
• Transparency
• Know exactly what items have contributed to
  particular variables
• Lower processing costs
• No longer structure or format dependent
• New statistics without surveying
• Low level data could be reassembled to meet
  different needs
• More consistent data
• Automation of data supply eliminates human error
• Coherence at the unit record level

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Taxonomies

• Collection Taxonomies
• Reuse of future Industry standard taxonomies,
  e.g. payroll
• May be a government wide taxonomy
• Total picture of requirements matched to what
  existing taxonomies can provide
• Publishing Taxonomies
• Will need to create a supplementary taxonomy for
  publishing statistical data
• International taxonomies for national statistical
  agencies

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Example - Quarterly Local Authority Survey

• Currently a spreadsheet completed by Auckland
  City Council
• 3.5 hours to complete
• 44 variables based on accounting items from both
  the Income and Expenditure, and Fixed Asset
  schedule
• Not including comments and other metadata
• IT service provider UBMatrix Wiztech
• providing XBRL expertise
• Auckland City Council - SAP/excel to XBRL
• Statistics NZ - XBRL to Sybase

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Initial XBRL Data Collection Architecture
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How the Exchange Might Work

• Auckland City Council provides an Excel output
  from SAP
• 2002/3 data
• Excel tagged as XBRL and an instance document
  generated
• Instance document sent to Statistics NZ via
  StatsGate
• StatsGate is a pre-existing secure data
  lodgement facility
• Instance document unravelled and loaded to Sybase
• Sybase table planned to be the single data entry
  point for survey systems to interact with

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What We Have Learned So Far

• Receiving electronic files is relatively straight
  forward
• Its something we do already
• A fully automated end to end process is not
  likely in the short term
• There is a significant overhead associated with
  supplementing the existing taxonomies with
  Statistics NZ elements
• Of the 44 variables 24 had to be defined
  separately as Statistics NZ elements
• These 24 are spread evenly through income,
  expenditure and fixed assets
• Some financial surveys may be more suited to XBRL
  sourced data than others
• Balance of Payments vs Quarterly Local Authority
  Survey

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Supplementary Taxonomy

• A hypothetical example of how Statistics NZ data
  requirements may not match IFRS/NZ GAAP

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XBRL - One Mode of Many

• Statistics NZ will still receive paper
  questionnaires
• Along with XBRL Statistics NZ may receive other
  electronic modes
• Spreadsheets designed by Statistics NZ in a
  tailored environment
• Internet forms
• Telephone interviewing
• Regardless of the mode Statistics NZ wants to
  have one inwards data flow
• XBRL may provide Statistics NZ with a better way
  of integrating data from multiple sources
• XBRL tags could potentially be applied to
  statistical output data from all sources

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Multi-Modal Data Collection Concept
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Issues We are Still Thinking About

• Uptake How can we promote XBRL
• SMEs versus larger businesses
• Financial software packages
• Fully automated transactions
• Moving towards meeting statutory obligations
  online
• Mode effects
• More accurate data may result in revisions to
  time series

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Statistics NZs and XBRL

• Continue building a picture of our future Data
  Collection environment
• Identifying critical implementation issues
• Realising XBRLs potential to meet our collection
  challenges
• Collaboration
• Common taxonomy across Government
• Collaborate with other statistical agencies
• XBRL potentially offers so much in terms of
  reduced compliance costs, transparency, accuracy
  and timeliness.

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Questions