Vision: Building an Open Community of Practice for Filing and XBRL

Goals:

1. Reduce regulatory costs and enhance the disclosure of financial information and other business reporting by companies and institutions.
2. Facilitate the advance of innovative and sustainable open solutions for business reporting standards and thereby reduce the digital divide.
3. Create and maintain an open global community of practices and applications in the field of business reporting standards.
4. Promote and advertise, providing visibility and funding opportunities, open source developments in the field of business reporting standards, as contributions and collaboration with stakeholders such as associations, developers, entities, enterprises, entrepreneurs, implementers, regulators, researchers, universities, users and vendors, among others.
5. Promote and participate in open initiatives that generate, address and/or disseminate financial information and business reporting matters through the use of standards.

Membership: (see at bottom) OpenFiling members are the volunteers sharing the vision and contributing to the goals by participating in the activities. Membership fees: None. The operational costs are minimal, so membership fees are not needed.

Founder Member: Member applying until the day of incorporation of OpenFiling, i.e. 31 March 2011 COB. Having the same rights/duties than the Number Members, however Founder Members are distinguished as “Openfiling Founder Member”.

OpenFiling original idea was raised in the Eurofiling project, a joint venture between XBRL experts of the European Supervision and XBRL gurus, among other stakeholders.

Activities:

• a) Promote the goals and activities of the Association through its presence on the Internet and social networks.
• b) Develop a collaborative environment for members and other stakeholders to carry out the goals of the Association.
• c) Support, promote and manage, where appropriate, funding sources and grants provided for open projects relating to business reporting standards.
• d) Sponsor optional clauses to promote the use of open-source standards in public tenders (taxpayers’ money) to improve sharing results and outcomes.
• e) Support businesses and individual users of open source standards, with pertinent information, guidance and backup copies of such deliverables.
• f) Facilitate the continuous development of open standards, freely available for use and adaptation.
• g) Disseminate and promote the adoption of technologies and educational resources relating to open source standards, in academic and in all types of training.
• h) Promote research, development and innovation of open solutions based on business reporting standards.
• i) Enable, support and promote implementations and successful use cases, targeted to users, developers, businesses and regulators.
• j) Assist in the allocation of funds to support the development of open source solutions related to technology and services relating to business reporting standards, i.e., solutions that preferably should help entrepreneurs to create new businesses and encourage sustainable commercial implementations.
• k) Encourage and facilitate the use of open source standards through the information supply chain while maintaining neutrality.

Contact: Send a message to info@openfiling.info

OpenFiling would contribute to reduce the digital divide, providing base libraries and construction blocks to small companies and entrepreneurs, giving them the opportunity to develop, implement and customize high quality solutions for local market or niche applications, increasing competition and market choices. XML parsers are one example. This webpage is another example, as the use of the Open Source web engine WordPress allows focusing in real topics while reducing rutinely edition work .

OpenFiling would also be useful protecting employees and civil servants for biased comments. Neutrality is opting indistinctly for privative or open solutions, case by case, and always with the best cost/efficiency ratio. However, sometimes the message arriving to the Management is like this real example:
The idea is that in a crisis situation like that is going global economy, we the entrepreneurs dismay to keep fighting to build our businesses and our country, given that our main competition is found in the opinions and messages expressed by people who have an active role in the public sector of our own State.
We are striving to create innovative software, which is being implemented in both public and private institutions of other countries, which is being evaluated and weighted positively. It is assumed that there will be many other companies as we, struggling to defend their products inside and outside our borders.
However, if our biggest competitor is the public sector itself, through the opinions of its members by encouraging and subsidizing the creation of open source and training resources at zero cost, not only for our country but also for the other States, our local software industry will cease to strive for innovation, quality …  and all that we can do export, so damaging the country in the long-term and our businesses in the short term.

OpenFiling is an space of collaboration and contribution with all initiatives, public and private, commercial and non-for-profit, helping to create public goodwill with open proof-of-concept developments,  base  resources and reusable components, useful  for everybody due to be based on standards for business reporting.

Bylaws: These Bylaws of OpenFiling are an English translation provided for international members. The original and legally enforcing Bylaws are the Estatutos de la Asociación OpenFiling in Spanish, darfted using the predefined Bylaws as published by the Community of Madrid. Only the articles 1, 2 & 3 vary from an Association to other (i.e. name, objectives and activities).

Legal status: OpenFiling non-for-profit association was approved on July 7, 2011, as an international non-for-profit association of individuals, with the number 32.378 in the Community of Madrid, Spain.  The Application for Legal Registration was filed on Abril 4th 2011 in the Community of Madrid, Spain.

OpenFiling First Ordinary General Assembly: Rome (Italy), September 5, 2011. 15:00 UTC (17:00 CEST). Webinar is available. See agenda and details. As first regular elections, all positions will be filled at 3 years term. Please find the Nominations paper with volunteers’ Board Members biographies. The Founding Assembly was held on March 30th 2011 in London, UK.

Head Office: Community of Madrid, Spain. The regulatory burden of initial registration and yearly filing is minimal, some promoters live in Madrid, and Spain is one of the most active European contributors to Open Source.

Membership application: Send the Application for Membership to info@openfiling.info describing yourself your interest and your contact information, or use the form below. Disclaimer: In accordance with the provisions of European Regulation of Personal Data, you consent the inclusion of your personal data in a file, owned by the Association, whose purpose is to manage the contact list of the Association for internal purposes only. Such information shall be not shared with any other party. The Association informs hereby to you about your right of access, cancellation, rectification and opposition, as well as withdraw, rights to be exercised simply by sending an e-mail to info@openfiling.info at any time.