Confirming the original intention of the FAST Standard authors, the FAST Standard Organisation (“FSO”) is pleased to announce that version 02c July 2019 of the FAST Standard is now formally and legally made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence.
This will allow anyone to copy, make use of and make changes to the document without infringing copyright law. The only condition under the licence is that proper attribution is given to the original creator of the document, namely the FSO. Once applied, the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence cannot be revoked.
Morten Siersted, co-author of the standard and member of the FSO, said: “We want government organisations, development finance institutions, consultancy firms, training firms and individual financial modellers around the world to use the FAST Standard without any concern about somehow locking into a proprietary system. The Creative Commons Licence is a more explicit and legally binding commitment to keeping the FAST Standard in the public domain forever. In taking this step, we owe a debt of gratitude to Johnny West of OpenOil (and member of the FSO Advisory Board) for pointing out that this formality needed to be put in place.”
Johnny West, director of OpenOil, said: “Like all actors in complex markets, governments need financial models to handle the trillions of dollars of deals they make every year. The opening of the FAST standard is a key step to enabling those models to be robust, open to review, and on budget.”
Created in 1999 and publicly fully documented in 2011, the FAST Standard is among the first attempts to develop and document a comprehensive financial modelling methodology. It is a shared modelling language based on a series of characteristics that provide a framework for designing and constructing a good financial model. While many less prescriptive and less comprehensive best practice guidelines exist, the FAST methodology is deliberately positioned by the FSO as a standard against which it is possible to measure a financial model’s compliance / non-compliance.
Organisations that work with the FAST Standard and have made a public endorsement of its philosophy and practical application may be found here: https://www.fast-standard.org/signatories/.
The FAST Standard version 02c July 2019 may be viewed / downloaded here: https://www.fast-standard.org/the-fast-standard/
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