A Brief History of EDGAR Filings
A question is get very often is: what exactly are EDGAR Filings? Well, I thought that one way to explain what these types of filings are would be to give you a brief history of how they came to be. The government actually began developing an electronic disclosure system back in 1983. By the fall of 1984, a pilot system was opened for volunteers filing with both the Division of Corporation Finance and the Division of Investment Management. On July 15, 1992, the operational EDGAR system was made available to those filers, still on a voluntary basis.
On February 23, 1993, the Commission issued four releases adopting rules, on an interim basis, that required filers to file electronically, by direct transmission, diskette, or magnetic tape, most documents processed by the Divisions of Corporation Finance and Investment Management.
After completing the phase-in of a statutorily mandated significant test group in December 1993, the Commission refrained from further phase-in of EDGAR filers while the staff evaluated EDGAR’s performance during a six-month test period, which ran from January 1, 1994 to June 30, 1994. The evaluation resulted in a positive assessment of the EDGAR system, based on data gathered from within the Commission as well as from the filers and other members of the public. Consequently, the staff recommended that the Commission proceed with full implementation of mandated electronic filing.
