Addressing the Last Mile Problem in Open Government Data: Using AIS Technologies to Enhance Governmental Financial Reporting

Li, Huaxia; Wei, Danyang; Moffitt, Kevin; Vasarhelyi, Miklos

Abstract

Although the OGD initiative has gained global momentum over the past two decades, the lack of a machine-readable format for much financial OGD in the U.S. hinders stakeholders' ability to use this information. This study draws on the “last mile problem”—a term that originally symbolizes inefficiencies in the final stage of delivering goods or services to end-users—to describe the difficulties that stakeholders face when analyzing PDF-type financial OGD. Following a design science methodology, this study proposes a report analysis framework to address this problem, develop processes, and evaluate its performance through a GASB standard-setting process (PIR). Results indicate that this framework achieves a 95.8 percent accuracy rate for data extraction from governmental reports and is four times faster than GASB's existing approach. This research contributes to the government accounting literature by applying accounting information system technologies to enhance the usability of OGD for various accounting users.

Citation

Li, H., Wei, D., Moffitt, K., & Vasarhelyi, M. (online). Addressing the Last Mile Problem in Open Government Data: Using AIS Technologies to Enhance Governmental Financial Reporting. Journal of Emerging Technologies in Accounting, https://doi.org/10.2308/JETA-2024-018

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jun 5, 2025
• Online Publication Date: Jul 10, 2025
• Deposit Date: Jun 18, 2025
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 18, 2025
• Journal: Journal of Emerging Technologies in Accounting
• Print ISSN: 1554-1908
• Electronic ISSN: 1558-7940
• Publisher: American Accounting Association
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.2308/JETA-2024-018
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/4107723
• Publisher URL: https://publications.aaahq.org/jeta