XBRL News

IFRS Taxonomy Improvements Project

5 March 2006

The IASC Foundation XBRL Team is pleased to announce the release of the formal commencement of its Taxonomy Improvements Project.

This project aims to enhance the underlying structures and mechanisms of the IFRS taxonomy and to add new content. It does not aim to change existing content ( apart form known issues with its IFRS-7 content).

For a visualisation of the consolidated high level work projects and their inter-relationships, see:
http://www.iasb.org/xbrl/xbrl_lab/iascf_Molecule.html

By clicking on the active red molecules in the atomic structure, it is possible to see the prototype improvements developed in our .  These can also be accessed with historic work at the following link: http://www.iasb.org/xbrl/xbrl_lab/iascf_laboratory.html

Current Projects

Currently 4 projects under the improvements project are active links.  Other projects will be released over the coming months, as they become available.  Many of the inactive projects are already well under development.  Some, like our taxonomy reference linkbase improvements project (due for release in the next few days), have up to 7 distinct phases (or distinct sub-projects).

Coming Soon

Over the next six weeks we hope to release the following:

• Versioning – phase II (versioning linkbase development)
• SME phases I and II (architecture considerations and taxonomy development)
• IFRS-GP 2007 Draft 0.3
• Convergence Issues Paper, phase II and III  (equivalence theory and XBRL mechanism)
• References linkbase phases I-IV (enhancement projects miscellaneous refinements)

We have also begun work on the European Committee of Central balance Sheet Data Offices (ECCBSO) IFRS real cases phase III instance creation project.  This is a six month project to produce instances of 150 companies in the EU.

History

Details of this improvements project has been documented on our website since late 2005 under our Improvements Roadmap (see: http://www.iasb.org/xbrl/taxonomies/taxonomy_improvements_2005.html)

Timelines

As each new project is developed and tested, it will form part of the enhanced re-engineering of our IFRS  taxonomy over the course of 2007.  No specific deadlines have been provided for each work as it is all highly experimental in nature – therefore rigid timelines cannot be attached to work of this nature.