With the dawn of Web 2.0 comes EDGAR 2.0. The Securities and Exchange Commission has awarded business process and information technology services firm Keane Inc. a $48 million contract to modernize and ultimately replace its Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis and Retrieval (EDGAR) system. Keane has three years to complete the task. The SEC can extend the contract three times for one-year terms giving Keane a possible six years. Although EDGAR was formally introduced to the Internet in 1996, it has more or less remained the same over the last 10 years. As the rest of the Internet has moved past basic text adopting Extensible Markup Language or XML and other technologies, the current EDGAR remains trapped in a static text environment. Of course, its simplicity has not limited what journalists and bloggers can find in the millions of SEC filings found on the system. Without the venerable EDGAR system, big news stories such as the Enron scandal may have never been uncovered. Keane is promising to make EDGAR a dynamic data system with real-time search functions promising to make life easier for those journalists, bloggers and, of course, analysts and bankers. —Matthew Wurtzel
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