I don't think EDGAR is outsourced. I think EDGAR is a project run by the SEC. There appears to be a separate company called EDGAR Online which is all about taking data from the SEC's EDGAR and making it more palatable for institutional investors. The only outsourced component here is the EDGAR Dissemination System (the subscription push feed of EDGAR filings), but that is outsourced to a company called Attain, LLC.

Distributing a digital document in a way where everyone in the world gets it at very close to exactly the same time sounds like an incredibly difficult problem.

Does it have to be? I'm sure we can come up with something.

Off the top of my head - distribute encrypted blob ahead of time, then broadcast the key using longwave radio from the South Pole.

I'm not sure that lowers the bar out of "incredibly difficult".

For instance, how would you feel if you heard the SEC invested in a bespoke technology for doing this just to mitigate a document timing issue only interesting to a very small number of market participants? I'd be upset about the waste of my tax dollars personally.

It doesn't have to be a SEC-specific thing. We can make it a general service - it publishes a public key + "release time" well in advance, then publish the public key at the exact "release time". This allows anyone to release information on the exact specified time.

Sort of like GPS - maintained by one party, useful for the whole world - but much simpler to implement.

I like this idea but you're not thinking big enough. The public key must be transmitted from space to avoid giving first mover advantage to those sneaky penguins.

This is SpaceX's killer app.

Penguins might get a leg up on the information, but they won't be able to reach New Your Stock Exchange before those who live right next to it, so it all evens out.

The only creatures who are disadvantaged by this scheme are polar bears and others living way north of the stock exchange - they also get their data late, but can't compensate by shorter distance to exchange.