The Securities and Exchange Commission announced the agenda for its Oct. 8 roundtable on providing more transparency to investors, as part of its 21st Century Disclosure Initiative, which will look at how best to overhaul the SEC’s current forms-based disclosure system.

The first panel will tackle the Market’s Use of Disclosure Information and the SEC’s Disclosure System. Among other things, panelists will consider whether the current system of collecting and filing data for SEC disclosure obligations has kept pace with the market; how investors can get the information they need to make investment decisions; and the data, technology, and processes that companies and other filers use in satisfying their SEC disclosure obligations. The group will also compare the needs and uses of investors and companies to the capabilities of the SEC’s disclosure system to better understand any gaps and inefficiencies that can lead to inaccuracies, delays, and unnecessary complexity. Participants include John Bajkowski, vice president and senior financial analyst at the American Association of Individual Investors; Robert Sorrentino, Xerox’s director of accounting policy and external reporting; David Copenhafer, former director of EDGAR Services at Bowne & Co.; Glenn Doggett, policy analyst at the CFA Institute Centre for Financial Market Integrity; Paul Haaga Jr., vice chairman of Capital Research & Management Co.; Kara Jenny, chief financial officer of Bluefly; and Timothy Thornton, principal of Web Services at The Vanguard Group.

The second panel, Modernizing the SEC’s Disclosure System, will consider how the SEC could better organize and operate its disclosure system, including ways to structure disclosure data so investors can more effectively search for company data and compare investment options. The panel will describe a possible “company file system,” in which core company information would be collected in a central structured data file, as well as other approaches to use technology to better serve investors and the markets. Panelists include former Corporation Finance director Alan Beller, now a partner at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton; Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati Partner Steven Bochner; EDventure Holdings Chairman Esther Dyson; Stanford Law School Professor and former SEC Commissioner Joseph Grundfest; Eric Roiter, Lecturer on Law at Harvard and Boston University; Liv Watson, member of the board of IRIS; Hillary Sale, chair in corporate finance and law at the University of Iowa; and Douglas Chia, senior counsel and assistant corporate secretary at Johnson & Johnson.

Corporate Finance Director John White, Investment Management Division Director Andrew Donohue, and Jim Kaput and Matthew Reed, counsel to and assistant Director of 21st Century Disclosure Initiative, respectively, will serve as moderators.

As part of the initiative, the SEC also issued a formal request for public comment, seeking input, among other things, on whether it should make changes to its current disclosure system, what aspects of the system and process are in need of improvement, the ways operating and investment companies collect, summarize, analyze, file, and disseminate the information submitted to the SEC, how they submit disclosure and reporting information to the SEC, and ways the system could be changed to reduce burdens and create efficiencies, consistent with investor protection. Comments submitted will become part of the public record of the roundtable and posted without change to the SEC Website.

The roundtable will be held at SEC headquarters and Webcast on the SEC’s Website. Compliance Week will provide readers with full coverage of the event in an upcoming edition.