What is IDEA?

IDEA, short for Interactive Data Electronic Applications, is a user-friendly information portal to SEC data that lets investors, analysts and others:

• Perform customized searches
   
• Extract meaningful and actionable filing data

How is IDEA Different Than EDGAR?

IDEA is based on contemporary data standards. It is designed to keep pace with developments in investment disclosure. It will supplement and is intended to replace the EDGAR system. The transition from forms and documents to data — will make information faster, easier, and less expensive for investors to get.

IDEA will help facilitate that both the SEC and the investors who rely on the reports the agency demands are ready for the new world of disclosure that will arrive with interactive data.

During the transition to IDEA, investors will also be able to use IDEA’s advanced features to search EDGAR. Some information on IDEA will be much easier to import to spreadsheets and analytical software. EDGAR documents will continue to be available as an archive of company filings for past years.

What are the Benefits of IDEA?

IDEA will help investors receive financial information that is dynamic and usable as they make their investment decisions. As investors benefit, so do the public companies, mutual funds, or other filers who will be able to showcase greater transparency. IDEA helps tear down barriers to quick and meaningful investment information. Markets can become more efficient while investors can access quality data faster than was ever possible before.

What About Interactive Data?

Interactive data relies on computer “tags,” similar in function to bar codes, which identify individual items in a company’s financial disclosures. With every number on an income statement or balance sheet individually labeled, information about thousands of companies contained on thousands of forms could be easily searched on the Internet, downloaded into spreadsheets, reorganized in databases, and put to any number of other comparative and analytical uses by investors, analysts, journalists, and financial intermediaries.

The ease with which interactive data will make financial information available also is expected to generate many new Web-based services and products for investors. As companies fie using interactive data, IDEA will give them far faster, more accurate, and more meaningful information about the companies and mutual funds they own.

http://www.sec.gov/idea/searchidea/what_is_idea.html