Fighting for Easy Access To SEC Financial Data   

A federal database with an unassuming name and the potential to inspire a myriad of stories about American business has journalists fighting for wider access.

Last spring, the Securities and Exchange Commission introduced its $100 million Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis and Retrieval system (EDGAR) to process 10 million pages of 10-K and other reports filed by businesses each year. Currently, the SEC requires 2,500 corporations to file electronically and by mid-1996 wants all 15,000 filers online.

Yet for many researchers, EDGAR is a distant resource. Visitors to the SEC's New York, Washington and Chicago reading rooms (and eventually 10 other regional offices) can use EDGAR free. But elsewhere, no luck – although several commercial vendors offer access at hefty prices. That upsets many journalists and researchers who say SEC data should be more readily available.

The controversy stems from a $13 million contract awarded to an Ohio company, Mead Data Central, to provide a full-text search-and-retrieval system on 650 computer terminals for SEC staffers in Washington, D.C., and in the agency's public reading rooms. ?he company also received permission to sell direct access to EDGAR's data, with prices starting at $89,000 annually. The SEC says it hopes consumer online services such as CompuServe and Prodigy will buy access to EDGAR from Mead and offer it to their subscribers.

Even so, most researchers can't afford to go through commercial vendors, many of whom charge $2 to $6 per minute, argues James Love, director of Ralph Nader's Taxpayer Assets Project (TAP), which monitors government information resources. Many journalists echo Love's sentiments.

"Why do we have these barriers to information that [taxpayers have] already paid for?" asks Elizabeth Marchak, a Washington correspondent for Cleveland's Plain Dealer who specializes in computer-assisted reporting. Marchak is among a group of two dozen reporters lobbying Congress to keep federal databases accessible. "We have to protect ourselves down the road," she says.

John Lane, who oversees EDGAR as the SEC's chief information officer, says journalists need to be patient. "Their objectives and our objectives are exactly the same – the cost-effective dissemination of information," he says.

?here has been progress. Following a request from TAP, the SEC agreed to make monthly EDGAR filings available on CD-ROM computer disks to 1,500 federal libraries. But Love and many journalists say they also want access to EDGAR through Internet, that vast network of computer networks.

The SEC estimates that putting EDGAR on Internet would cost $775,000 for the first year and $400,000 annually thereafter. If that happens, Love says anyone with a computer, modem and access to Internet could download filings for two cents to 20 cents per document. "We're talking about something that's almost too cheap to meter," he says.

"If [the committee] can't convince the SEC to put EDGAR on the Internet," says Penny Loeb, an associate editor at U.S. News & World Report who specializes in computer-assisted reporting, "it sets a very bad precedent."