Conference Speakers
Harm Jan van Burg
Harm Jan van Burg is senior policy-maker of the Directorate General of the Tax and Customs Administration, part of the Netherlands’ Ministry of Finance.
He is currently the programme director for the Netherlands’ Standard Business Reporting Programme – a Netherlands government initiative to reduce administrative burdens. The SBR programme is also one of the programmes of “renewal of Government services” in The Netherlands.
With a degree in social sciences and having previously worked for the Dutch Post and Telecommunications, Harm Jan has been active in various roles across the Dutch Civil Service since 1983, linked mostly with corporate communications and electronic filing. He was responsible for the pioneering videotext services and the first tax administration website. He was involved in developing electronic tax filing from 1996 onwards and from 2003 till 2009 vice-chair of the intergovernmental management team for the co-ordination of e-government development in the Netherlands.
Other examples of his work areas include customs communications, chain management for tax form production and distribution, innovation and development of E-tax services.
Worldwide tax administrations are actively interested in open standards for tax interoperability. The OECD Forum on Tax Administrations (along with OASIS – the world standards organisation for e-commerce) took the initiative to form the tax-XML technical committee. Since 2003, several tax administrations, together with major software vendors and accountancy firms, have joined this committee. Harm Jan has been the promoter and chair of this committee from the outset in 2003 till it finalised its business in 2009. He was awarded the Dutch XML award for his efforts. During this time he was also chair of OASIS- E-gov for two years and presently member of the Netherlands delegation in UNCEFACT
Convinced of the added value of standardisation, focusing on increasing the efficiency and transparency in financial reporting processes between businesses and government, Harm Jan was the initiator of the Netherlands Taxonomy Project (awarded the Netherlands innovation award in 2006) – which now is proceeding as the Standard Business Reporting Programme.
Hans van Damme
On 18 December 2008, the leaders of 43 accountancy professional bodies from 32 European countries unanimously appointed Hans van Damme, as FEE President for a two years term.
Hans van Damme was Deputy President of the Executive Board of the European Federation of Accountants (FEE) since 2003 and Vice president in charge of Financial Reporting. In that capacity he has been at the heart of FEE’s involvement with financial reporting and amongst others member of the Supervisory Board of EFRAG (the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group, a private body advising the European Commission on the endorsement of IFRSs). He is also involved in the auditors' delegation on the Round table on IFRS implementation. Having started as a member of the Bank's Working Party in 1993 he became chairman of that group in the course of 2001. As a result of the involvement in the Banks Working Party he was co-chair of the Financial Instruments Subgroup. From the start of the Financial Reporting Policy Group in the course of 2003 he chairs this group that is advising FEE on policy related matters in the area of financial reporting. Further he is co-chair of the joint EFRAG-FEE working group on financial reporting for SMEs.
Hans became a Qualified public accountant (Registered Accountant) in 1978, subsequent to a study and degree in business economics at the University of Amsterdam (1975). He is an audit partner at KPMG in the Netherlands based in the Amsterdam Financial Services Practice. He serves top clients from the banking and leasing sector, both quoted and non-quoted. For many years he was responsible for the professional practice department within Financial Services. He has first hand experience both in auditing and advisory services.
About FEE
FEE (Fédération des Experts Comptables Européens – Federation of European Accountants) represents 43 professional institutes of accountants and auditors from 32 European countries, including all of the 27 EU Member States”
In representing the European accountancy profession, FEE recognises the public interest. It has a combined membership of more than 500.000 professional accountants, working in different capacities in public practice, small and big firms, government and education, who all contribute to a more efficient, transparent, and sustainable European economy.
For more information: secretariat@fee.be or Tel: + 32 2 285 40 85
Hilde Van de Velde
Hilde Van de Velde is a Senior Manager within the Brussels practice of Deloitte. Since two years she has been working as the full-time programme manager of the European Commission’s large-scale measurement of administrative burdens imposed on European businesses. She has also been involved in administrative burden projects across Europe (Belgium, the Netherlands, Cyprus, Hungary, Bulgaria,…). Besides her expertise in Administrative Burden reduction, Hilde has been leading several major reengineering projects for Belgian government administrations.
Marc van Hilvoorde
At the Tax and Customs Administration The Netherlands (Belastingdienst) Marc is responsible for the development and implementation of digital reporting based on collaboration and open standards between the market, the tax administration and Dutch government. Marc is actively involved in the implementation and development of XBRL for years, as technical projectmanager of the Dutch National Taxonomy Project and member of the XBRL International Standards Board and the IASCF XBRL Advisory Council.
Frans van Schaik
Professor Frans van Schaik is an advisor in IPSAS implementation to national governments and international public sector organisations.
He is a member of IPSASB (International Public Sector Accounting Standards Board), the worldwide standard setting body for the financial reporting by governments and intergovernmental organizations.
Frans van Schaik has been an accounting and auditing partner of Deloitte in the Netherlands since 1996. He holds the Registeraccountant-degree (Certified Public Accountant) and is the deputy chair of the Public Sector Committee of the Netherlands Institute of Registeraccountants (Royal Nivra).
He is a full professor of management accounting at the University of Amsterdam (part-time) and lectured at the Royal Military Academy in the Netherlands. He obtained a PhD-degree and published over 50 articles in the field of accounting, auditing and decision support.
Miklos A. Vasarhelyi
Miklos A. Vasarhelyi [Ph.D in MIS (UCLA) MBA (MIT) and BS in Economics and Electrical Engineering (the State University of Guanabara and Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro)]. Professor Vasarhelyi is currently the KPMG Professor of Accounting Information Systems and Director of the Continuous Auditing and Reporting Laboratory (CARLAB) at Rutgers University. He is also the Technology Consultant at the AT&T Laboratories. He has published more than 200 journal articles and 20 books. He is the editor of the Artificial Intelligence in Accounting and Auditing series and an academic journals. Professor Vasarhelyi has taught executive programs on electronic commerce to many large international organizations including GE, J&J, Eli Lilly, Baxter, ADL, Volvo, Siemens, Chase Bank, and AT&T.
Iñaki Vázquez
Licentiate in Economics with two specialties, Economic Analysis and International Economics. Master’s degree in European Union. Doctor’s degree in Economics. Several courses of informatics, data processing, panel data and fiscal studies. As a researcher on economics he has participated in different projects financed by Ministry of Science and Technology, BBVA Fundation, Ministry of Education and Science and Aragón Government. Since 2006 he works as Manager Assistant in the Statistical Processes Center of the Land and Mercantile Registrars Association of Spain, participating also in the DGI and PGC-2007 Taxonomy workgroups.
Since this year he is the XBRL International Coordinator of the Association, and the contact person of Spain for the XBRL Europe EU Business Registers Working (sub)Group. He has also participated in the ND2 project (Registrars free software for making the digital deposit) and the financial statements formularies design.
Thomas Verdin
Thomas is Associate at THEIA Partners, a consulting company based in Paris, helping banks, investment firms and financial departments to set up and maintain their business and regulatory information supply chains. He is an expert on banking, finance and quality reporting.
As a consultant at THEIA Partners, Thomas actively promotes XBRL as a powerful means to improve processes and data quality. He is an active player of the dematerialization project by Infogreffe, the computer platform for French Registers that enables the XBRL-filing or conversion of annual accounts for every company in France. He participated in the COREP and FINREP projects for banking groups in Europe. He developed XBRL training in France and Morocco and contributed to the functional development of various taxonomies, including the French translation of the IFRS Taxonomy and the French Taxonomie Comptes Annuels. He now promotes the use of XBRL for performance management reports, based on EFQM and GRI models.
Thomas completed his engineering studies at Ecole Polytechnique de Bruxelles and Ecole Centrale de Paris, and earned a Master of Business Administration at Collège des Ingénieurs. He developed is expertise in various projects for industry, utilities and financial institutions in Belgium and France.
Thomas is chair of the XBRL Europe Business Registers Working Group.
