“Imagine if U.S. companies’ compliance costs could be reduced, by billions of dollars. Imagine if this could happen without sacrificing any transparency to investors and governments. Open data can make that possible. This first-ever research report, co-published by the Data Foundation and PwC, explains how Standard Business Reporting (SBR), in which multiple regulatory agencies adopt a common open data structure for the information they collect, reduces costs for both companies and agencies. SBR programs are in place in the Netherlands, Australia, and elsewhere – but the concept is unknown in the United States. Our report is intended to introduce SBR to U.S. policymakers and lay the groundwork for future change…Around the world, governments are choosing to transform their information from disconnected documents into open data. For our purposes, the term open data refers to information that is made interoperable using standardized definitions and digital formats, and digitally published and freely available for use and reuse by its users…Around the world, governments are choosing to transform their information from disconnected documents into open data. For our purposes, the term open data refers to information that is made interoperable using standardized definitions and digital formats, and digitally published and freely available for use and reuse by its users. The key, of course, is interoperability, which allows diverse systems and organizations to exchange and use one another’s data without having to translate it. For companies as well as agencies, open data offers significant efficiencies by reducing processing time and costs. First, if government agencies standardize data fields and formats for the information they collect, rather than expressing that information as unstructured documents, reporting companies’ software can automatically compile and report it, reducing manual labor. Quality improves; human ‘fat fingering’ is eliminated. Second, if multiple agencies align their fields and formats with one another by adopting universal standards for overlapping information, companies can submit the same information once, rather than multiple times to each agency. Meanwhile, open data promises to cut regulatory agencies’ costs and reduce their risks by allowing them to get and use regulatory information more quickly, shortening the processing required for data analysis. In the United States, for example, simple data matching could have revealed Bernie Madoff’s fraudulent activities before his financial firm collapsed, allowed agencies to quickly gauge the financial industry’s exposure to Lehman Brothers while deciding whether to initiate a bailout, and indicated that the fuel cell manufacturer Solyndra was the riskiest recipient of a federal loan guarantee well before its 2011 bankruptcy – if the relevant information had been available in a consumable format and in a timely manner. But because Madoff’s securities reports, Lehman’s financial filings, and Solyndra’s energy and securities disclosures were available only as disconnected documents, not open data, these insights would have required expensive, time-consuming, and purpose-built analytics projects. Most countries, including the United States, have not yet begun to apply open data to regulatory reporting. We will look at two prominent exceptions, the Netherlands and Australia, which have both embraced an approach known as Standard Business Reporting (SBR). SBR brings multiple government agencies together to define consistent data standards across their compliance requirements. In both the Netherlands and Australia, SBR reduces the manual labor of compliance, eliminates duplicated efforts of overlapping reporting requirements, and allows agencies to apply analytics…”