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Five experts from NSG&B emphasize the importance of cooperation at the Nordic conference on XBRL

The question for the conference arranged by XBRL Finland was, how do we in the Nordic region move from bookkeeping to automated reporting. The quick answer to that question is by co-operating and sharing experiences, across national borders, across disciplines and between private and public actors. 

  • 15. December 2023
  • News from Nordic Smart Goverment and Business

The panel is included five experts from NSG&B who attended the XBRL conference in Finland to share the Nordic experience and gain new knowledge. From left: Thomas Flank, Swedish Companies Registration Office. Håkon Olderbakk, Norwegian Brønnøysund Register Centre. Anttu Osanen, Finnish Tax Administration. Jeanette M. Skovholt, Norwegian Directorate of Taxes and Juho Mäkinen, Finnish Patent and Registration Office. 

"We are more different than we first understood. Our cooperation in this field has really helped us to understand the differences and we are now on our way to find common Nordic solutions, for the better of our society and companies, says Thomas Flank, business developer at the Swedish Companies Registration Office and project manager for the Swedish SBR program".

Standard, interoperability and flexibility 

The conference, which attracted around 100 participants, offered many engaging discussions devoted to the various challenges we face in national implementations. The balance between standardization and interoperability, along with a more flexible approach, is an example of an area of interests, and in which NSG&B's experts have a quite unified approach and emphasize the importance of working towards a high level of interoperability.

"We cannot think that we all should do things in exactly the same way and solve things in a uniform way. Solving the same issues in different ways is not necessarily a problem at all", says Jeanette M. Skovholt, senior advisor at The Norwegian Directorate of Taxes and expert in NSG&B, and continus:

"We have solved, and will continues to solve, things a bit differently through different approaches regarding XBRL. But we are all moving towards the same goal and we agree upon that structuring and standardising bookkeeping data is the way to go, since it creates great potential benefits for our Nordic companies and other stakeholders".

Juho Mäkinen, senior specialist at the Finnish Patent and Registration Office - PRH, adds that: 

"The Nordic co-operation is vital because the goals are very similar, yet we are moving forward at a different pace. It’s especially important to share our experiences with each other in the Nordic countries as we are in different phases of adoption".

The importance of common semantic models and a customer-oriented approach

During the conference, the NSG&B-participants emphasized the importance of working customer-oriented and focusing on creating semantic models to support and create Nordic interoperability and thus deliver a high level of value.

"There is a common will to develop things so that many different stakeholders will benefit from the solutions. We are committed to create solutions that provide overall societal value and to achieve this, we need to closely examine the customer's problems, not just the immediate solutions", says Anttu Osanen, Finnish Tax Administration and concludes: 

"We need to create different solutions for different organizations and companies, especially in the area of XBRL. We know that the demographic spread among companies is wide. By creating and agreeing on common semantic models that interpret and decode, we lay the foundation for interoperability that benefits both individual Nordic entrepreneurs and the Nordic region as a whole".