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SEC Introduces Edgar Successor
August 20, 2008
The Securities and Exchange Commission announced Tuesday that its decades-old reporting and disclosure system--Edgar--will be replaced by an XBRL-based platform called Idea, short for Interactive Data Electronic Applications, over the next three years.
By year-end, filings in the extensible business reporting language are expected to be available through Idea, which initially will operate concurrently with the Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis and Retrieval system. During the migration, users of Edgar, which is based on HTML and ASCII code, will be able to use some of Idea’s interactive data functionality, according to the SEC. The Edgar database will remain available as an archive.
“Idea will ensure that the SEC continues to stay ahead of the needs of investors,” said SEC chairman Christopher Cox in a statement, adding that the system “will give investors far faster, more accurate, and more meaningful information about the companies and mutual funds they own. Idea’s launch represents a fundamental change in the way the SEC collects and publishes company and fund information--and in the way that investors will be able to use it.”
Beth Roberts, managing partner for capital markets in North America and global head of data management for Accenture, said that “the new architecture will allow the SEC the flexibility to enhance the types of data it wants and standardize the information for users. Investors and other users of the data will also gain faster access and be able to manipulate it more easily.” Currently, Edgar users have to look at forms one at a time; with Idea, the SEC says they will be able to instantly collate data and create reports and analyses.
In May, the commission proposed requiring that all public companies submit their filings in XBRL-formatted data by 2011. The rule, which in 2009 would apply to the 500 largest companies using the U.S. generally accepted accounting principles, would replace a voluntary program begun in 2004 that attracted relatively few participants. “Making interactive data the backbone of the SEC’s system of company registration will be true to this agency’s early 20th-century roots in disclosure and transparency,” said Cox at the time.
Cox has advocated the use of technology to improve disclosure since coming on as chairman in August 2005. The agency in September 2006 said that it had awarded $54 million of contracts to bring Edgar, which handles more than 500,000 financial statements each year from public companies and other entities, up to speed. Included in that sum was $5.5 million for XBRL US, a part of the non-profit XBRL International, which is providing the taxonomy for the mandatory filing program.
“After 75 years of document-based static financial reporting, whether in paper documents or in electronic equivalents, it is exciting to see the SEC poised to cross the ‘data threshold’ and help investors receive financial information that is dynamic, usable and ready to go as they make their investment decisions,” said David Blaszkowsky, director of the SEC’s office of interactive disclosure. “By tapping the power of interactive data to tear down barriers to quick and meaningful investment information, markets can become fairer and more efficient while investors can possess far better quality data than was ever possible before.”
