The Governmental Accounting Standards Board is currently looking for input on how financial disclosures become digitized and eventually work within the framework created by Financial Data Transparency Act.
"This project intends to provide a pathway to digitizing annual comprehensive financial reports without changing existing reporting requirements," said GASB.
"This project is not expected to result in the issuance of a GASB standard or to establish any new reporting requirements."
GASB is an independent, private-sector organization that establishes accounting standards for state and local governments that follow Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.
The Voluntary Digital Financial Reporting project is being carried out along two related tracks.
The first focuses on developing the GASB-General Accepted Accounting Principles taxonomy.
The second focuses on considering how that taxonomy could facilitate the extraction of data from government financial reports.
A 32-page
The project is designed to improve access to governmental financial information for users of financial statements and zeroes in on four key considerations including the organization of GASB reporting requirements and the incorporation of existing optionality.
The board is also looking for input on the incorporation of observed practice in the presentation of financial statements, and government-specific information.
Digitized financial reporting requirements are being ushered into the muni accounting world via the Financial Data Transparency Act.
The FDTA was passed in 2016 against the wishes of many muni advocates.
Its goal is to improve disclosure in the municipal bond market by instituting universal machine-readable formatting to disclosures that are often now rendered as PDFs.
"The GASB-GAAP taxonomy is designed solely to make financial statements more accessible," said GASB.
"The design does not change reporting requirements or improve the financial report itself. Use of the GASB-GAAP taxonomy is voluntary and does not affect the content of the statements, which remains the same as the paper or PDF version."
The resulting taxonomy "is expected to enable governments to present their financial statements using alternative digital technologies that can facilitate the accessibility of information for users."
The Securities and Exchange Commission is leading the effort to implement the FDTA and in
Questions about who will fund implementing changes to the disclosure and reporting system remain contentious.
Building a system that's compatible with bond issuers of all sizes, accountants, tax attorneys, municipal advisors and investors is spurring debates over switching out CUSIPs for FIGIs – two separate identifying systems used for securities.
How financial statements are "tagged" through formatting documents is another active discussion track.
Discussions are also ongoing about what machine language will be used to connect all the documents with Extensible Business Reporting Language or "XBRL" emerging as a popular option.
The deadline for submitting comments is Nov. 30, 2026.
Comments should be addressed to the Director of Research and Technical Activities, Project No. 3-32, and emailed to director@gasb.org. Comments can also be submitted through an
