By Herbert Lash

NEW YORK, Dec 11 (Reuters) - IEX Group Inc, a stock-trading venue featured in Michael Lewis's book "Flash Boys" that plans to soon become an exchange, is urging reforms to U.S. exchange governance that would put it at odds with its soon-to-be brethren.

In a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission, IEX said its recommendations would eliminate conflicts and boost transparency in the governance of data processors and data feeds, among other infrastructure aspects of the U.S. stock market.

"We are in a position to think in a fresh way about what an exchange should be, how it should be organized and the level of accountability and transparency that exchanges ought to have," said John Ramsay, chief market policy & regulatory officer at IEX and a former SEC director of markets and trading.

"Unless we fix the governance piece we're just not going to have the transparency and accountability that you need," Ramsay said Thursday. The letter was published by the SEC on Wednesday.

Ramsay described the letter as an "opening salvo" in efforts to improve the U.S. stock market, an objective behind the IEX trading platform and its "speed bump" to delay incoming orders and eliminate any speed advantage high-frequency traders might enjoy.

The IEX recommendations would change rules for voting that caused a stir over contracts recently awarded to exchange operators Nasdaq OMX Group Inc and Intercontinental Exchange Inc's the New York Stock Exchange.

Neither the Nasdaq nor the NYSE recused itself from voting, though they did not break any rules. The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), a lobby for brokers and asset managers, complained, as did International Securities Exchange Holdings Inc, an exchange operator.

IEX said a new framework should be created for overseeing the data processors, which have come under regulatory scrutiny, most noticeably after a glitch in one of them sparked a three-hour trading halt in Nasdaq stocks in August 2013.

IEX urged making minutes of the committees that oversee the processors public, along with certain voting records, revenue and its distribution, among other items.

It also urged broker and investor representation in voting, an initiative that SIFMA strongly backs.

IEX said in the letter it intends to apply for registration as a national securities exchange in the "near term."

(Reporting by Herbert Lash; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)