{
  "id": "1995-november-sec-ponders-edgars-fate",
  "slug": "1995-november-sec-ponders-edgars-fate",
  "url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1995-november-sec-ponders-edgars-fate.html",
  "year": 1995,
  "month": "November",
  "monthNum": 11,
  "headline": "SEC ponders EDGAR's fate",
  "kicker": "On the internet",
  "author_name": "Robert Anderson",
  "author_title": "",
  "affiliation": "University of Missouri",
  "summary": "The SEC is considering privatizing EDGAR, its free public database of company financial documents, and is soliciting public input through a survey with an extended deadline of November 30. The move has sparked concerns from advocates of free public access who believe for-profit companies are lobbying to eliminate the free service.",
  "keywords": [
    "EDGAR",
    "privatization",
    "database"
  ],
  "topics": [
    "Data & Databases",
    "Government & Politics",
    "Business & Economy"
  ],
  "technologies": [
    "EDGAR",
    "Internet",
    "World Wide Web",
    "Nexis"
  ],
  "full_text": "Although the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has put a key database of company financial documents on the Internet, the agency is hinting that free access to the database might come to an halt. Among the possibilities the SEC raises is privatization the database, known as EDGAR. \"We want to throw the net as wide as we can\" for suggestions about how to run EDGAR, said Mike Bartell, an official in the SEC's Office of Information Technology. He was referring to a 12-question survey that was placed on the SEC's web page (http://www.sec.gov) and in the publication Commerce Business Daily on Oct. 9. The No. 1 question in the survey is: \"Should all, or a portion of EDGAR be privatized?\" Another question refers to the operation of EDGAR at the SEC's Web site: \"Should the agency continue to maintain and operate this service or should this service be provided by the private sector either on the Internet or via some other means?\" The questionnaire, called a request for information, had an original response deadline of Oct. 31 - but that has been extended to Nov. 30, according to the SEC. Bartell said the main reason for the extension is that \"there's an awful lot of interest in this.\" But he declined to say what the volume of the response or what responders were suggesting. EDGAR, which stands for Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis and Retrieval system, was phased in by the SEC in 1993 for access to filings of public companies. Among the documents is the 10-K, the annual financial report for a public company. Investors, journalists and the general public use 10-K's and other EDGAR documents to assess the financial well-being of companies.\n\nMalamud's service (http://www.town.hall.org) had carried the EDGAR documents on-line until Sept. 28, under a two-year pilot program underwritten by the National Science Foundation. The SEC took over control of the EDGAR system on that date.\nThe pilot program also allowed Internet Multicasting to carry full-text versions of patent documents filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The funding for carrying that database ended at the same time as funding EDGAR. The Patent Office has promised to put up a free on-line system of searchable-but not full-text patent information by Nov. 9.\nDuring the pilot program, persons exploring EDGAR scrutinized an average of 17,000 documents per day, for a total of 3 million documents.\nThe SEC states that almost three-quarters of the 15,580 publicly traded domestic companies now use EDGAR to file their reports. Under a U.S. Congressional mandate, the remainder of the companies will file by May 1996.\nSince 1985, the SEC also has given out millions of dollars in contracts to such private firms as LEXIS-NEXIS of Dayton, Ohio, which packages raw EDGAR documents for resale.\nMalamud has said that for-profit companies tried to kill free on-line access to EDGAR when the Internet Multicasting project ended and the SEC took over the online service.\n\"Lobbyists for the Information Industry Association (IIA) have actively opposed this project,\" said Malamud in a September statement on the Internet Multicasting Web page. He invited people to write SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt with their complaints.\nIn an interview, Malamud praised the actions of the SEC to keep the free online service.\n\"My feeling is that the database is on-line with the SEC and it will be difficult to take a step backward by removing it,\" he said. \"However, the SEC has an obligation to find out what people and the industry think, hence the RFI.\"\nThe main SEC contracts for EDGAR expire at the end of 1996. SEC officials have said they may use responses from the questionnaire to put together a request for proposals from companies that want to take over the EDGAR system.\nRobert Anderson can be reached at (314) 449-6714, or send e-mail to Robert43@delphi.com",
  "provenance": {
    "extracted_by": "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-6",
    "extracted_at": "2026-07-05",
    "verified": true
  },
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  "html_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1995-november-sec-ponders-edgars-fate.html",
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}