Contacts:
Object Management Group and Data
Transparency Coalition Announce SMART Regulation Task Force,
Invite Public and Private Sector to Participate
Task Force will Encourage Agencies to Standardize
Rules and Disclosures
Needham, MA and Washington, D.C., USA – August 28, 2012 –
OMG® and the
Data
Transparency Coalition today announced that they will
jointly form the SMART Regulation Task Force to advocate the
incorporation of data standards in U.S. federal regulation.
The task force will encourage regulatory agencies to use
electronic standardization to clarify their rules,
facilitate cheaper compliance, sharpen their enforcement
capabilities, and move toward greater transparency.
Both the Data Transparency Coalition and OMG bring
complementary strengths to the new task force. The Coaltion
will play an advocacy role, by engaging with US government
agencies, Congress and global regulators to identify the
high priority challenges and requirements for SMART
regulation. OMG will provide its proven technology neutral
standards development process, as well as expertise in data
and process standards to infuse innovation into regulations'
life cycle, leading to development of newer standards
compliant software solutions.
The task force will identify and promote opportunities to
apply industry-defined standards to regulatory text and
disclosures. “SMART” stands for Standardized, Measurable,
Actionable, Reliable, and Timely. Existing and future
applications of SMART regulation include:
- Standardized identifiers. A range of financial
regulatory agencies are expected to begin using the
global Legal Entity Identifier (LEI), which will allow
regulatory disclosures filed by the same entity with
different agencies to be searched together.
- Standardized interchange formats. In 2006, the FDIC
and other banking regulators began requiring banks to
provide their call reports in the eXtensible Business
Reporting Language (XBRL) rather than as plain text. The
adoption of an electronic interchange format boosted
accuracy from 70% to 100%, reduced preparation time from
weeks to days, and allowed the FDIC’s analysts to cover
more banks.
- Standardized data models. The Financial Industry
Business Ontology (FIBO), currently being developed by
OMG, will standardize descriptions of financial
instruments so that parties to swaps and derivatives can
instantly understand their exposure and regulators can
track risk.
- Standardized vocabularies. If regulators drafted
rules using machine-readable terms and connectors,
regulated entities’ software systems could react
automatically—dramatically reducing compliance costs.
In addition to its advocacy with regulatory agencies, the
task force will encourage software companies to develop more
tools that use industry-defined standards to assist both the
agencies and their regulated entities.
“Makers and consumers of regulations must deal with
ambiguous language, unnecessary complexity, scope overlaps,
conflicting timelines, and a lack of measurable costs and
benefits,” said Richard Mark Soley, Ph.D., Chairman & CEO of
OMG. “Standardization can address these problems if the
agencies, the regulated entities, and the technology
industry all embrace the right standards. Our task force
will try to make that happen.”
“Many regulatory agencies – especially in the financial
sector – are getting serious about the need to standardize
their rules and the disclosures they receive,” said Hudson
Hollister, Executive Director of the Data Transparency
Coalition. “But frequently I’ve found that advocates of
standardization in one agency aren’t aware of parallel work
in another agency. Meanwhile, Congress and the White House
would like to support standardization but need better
information. And the technology industry has no single
source that collects and communicates new opportunities for
standards-driven regulatory tools. The SMART Regulation Task
Force will fill these needs.”
Participation in the Task Force will be open to members
of OMG and the Data Transparency Coalition. The task force
will seek input from government, regulated entities, and
academia. The two organizations will define the vision and
scope of the task force at a kick-off meeting on September
11, 2012, in Jacksonville, Florida. An initial draft charter
can be found at
www.datacoalition.org/smartregulation.
About OMG
OMG® is an international, open membership, not-for-profit
computer industry standards consortium. OMG Task Forces
develop enterprise integration standards for a wide range of
technologies and an even wider range of industries. OMG’s
modeling standards enable powerful visual design, execution
and maintenance of software and other processes. For more
information, visit www.omg.org.
Note to editors:
For a listing of all OMG
trademarks, visit
http://www.omg.org/legal/tm_list.htm. All other
trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Edited by Stephanie
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