The SEC's 'Vast Electronic Filing Cabinet'
For Chairman Christopher Cox, moving the Securities and Exchange Commission into the information technology world is a top priority. Taking advantage of modern technology to further the commission's goals was a major theme in the chairman's prepared testimony Tuesday before the House Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Subcommittee.
Cox said the SEC's current online system, known as EDGAR, is "just a vast electronic filing cabinet" that "doesn't allow you to manage all of that information in ways that investors commonly need."
As a result, financial firms that can afford it get most of their information from middlemen who put the data into more useful forms, he said. The process is expensive, inefficient, creates errors, and "feeds the notion that the rich and the highly sophisticated have a leg up in today's markets," Cox said.
"The SEC expects to rename the EDGAR system in 2007," Cox noted. "In all, the commission is investing $54 million over several years to build the infrastructure to support widespread adoption of interactive data."
The $905.3 million budget request for fiscal 2008 "will allow the SEC to continue its commitment to information technology, which has the potential both to reduce regulatory costs and to give investors vastly more useful information than what they receive today," he added.
Cox said various technology improvements "will make the SEC more productive, and give both investors and taxpayers better value for their money."
He also reiterated his push for interactive data: "In the very near future, investors will be able to easily search through and make sense of the mountains of financial data contained in current company disclosures."
See Technology Daily's PM story for more details on Cox's testimony.
-- Winter Casey
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E-Government
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