Under the proposal adopted 3-0 by the Securities and Exchange Commission, most of the remaining public companies would be required to begin using the so-called XBRL, or extensible business reporting language, in their regulatory filings in 2010 and 2011.

The new system gets information to investors faster and more reliably and saves the companies money, the SEC said.

The proposed rule, one of several technology initiatives pushed by SEC Chairman Christopher Cox, is open for public comment for 60 days, after which it could be formally adopted by the agency.

The use of data-tagging with XBRL language will replace the agency's Edgar online reporting system, in place since the 1980s, which stores paper regulatory filings in electronic form.

Rather than treating financial information as a block of text - as in a standard Internet page or a printed document - XBRL language provides a unique identifying tag for each individual item of data, such as company net profit, for example.

That enables users to extract specific information more easily from SEC filings, run calculations and aggregate data as desired. Company revenue, for example, could be tracked over several years without having to open up and review multiple filings.