The Governmental Accounting Standards Board is adding a major project on accounting and financial reporting for infrastructure assets to its current technical agenda.
The project will consider how infrastructure assets should be recognized and measured on the financial statements of state and local governments and whether the optional use of the modified approach should continue to be allowed to report infrastructure assets. It will also evaluate whether more information related to the maintenance and preservation of infrastructure assets should be presented in financial statements, and, if so, what information should be provided, and where it should go in the financial report.
The project will set standards-setting options to make related information about infrastructure assets more useful for making decisions and assessing government accountability. Another goal is to make such information more comparable across governments and more consistent over time and more relevant to assessments of a government's economic condition. GASB wants the information to better reflect the capacity of those assets to provide service and how that capacity can change over time.
Research done by GASB over the past few years on financial reporting information about capital assets, including infrastructure assets, has examined these areas broadly. Many stakeholders have shared their perspective on the value of information about capital assets in financial statements, difficulties in providing that information, and what other information about capital assets is needed.
GASB decided to add a project focusing on infrastructure assets to its technical agenda after carefully evaluating its staff's research findings this spring and taking into account input from its Governmental Accounting Standards Advisory Council, which ranked the project high on its list during its annual project prioritization.
For more information on the agenda, visit
