In a December 14, 2011 comment letter to the International Integrated Reporting Council on its discussion paper, Towards Integrated Reporting: Communicating Value in the 21st Century, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) supported an international framework for integrated reporting and encouraged the IIRC to leverage the preliminary, high level Enhanced Business Reporting Framework.
The letter states that: “We agree that there is a need for a new reporting model that brings together the currently disparate pieces and perspectives of business reporting to produce a more holistic external presentation of decision-useful information for investors and other stakeholders.” It suggests that the framework should allow organizations to find and report common framework elements most relevant to their stakeholders and that the elements should be presented so that they are comparable across companies and time periods. In order to improve transparency and provide easy access to, and analysis of, integrated reporting disclosures, the framework should allow the creation of standardized integrated reports using data standards such as eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL).
According to the AICPA, the initial focus of integrated reporting should be on larger companies and the needs of their investors, which would serve as an important core foundation that can be leveraged over time to meet the needs of all companies and audiences. For more information, read the AICPA Insight blog and visit the Enhanced Business Reporting section on AICPA.org.
