Ari Fitzgerald

Mark Schneider

My well respected former FCC colleague, Ari Gitzgerald has released a well written spectrum policy survey paper he coauthored with Mark Schneider of Sidley Austin LLP. The Hogan Lovells website with the paper adds “with contributions from the following telecommunications lawyers at Hogan Lovells LLP: Michele Farquhar, a partner; and associates Mark Brennan, Chris Termini and Aaron George.” The 90 page paper is well footnoted and should be a useful resource for many. It was very gracious of the authors to make this paper public.

The paper was presented originally at the Practising Law Institute’s 29th Annual Telecommunications Policy & Regulation Institute publication in December 2011. Long time readers may recall that we have written about this event before in this blog. PLI is a nonprofit group that charges high (>$1000) prices for both attendance at its events and copies of the material presented. There is nothing wrong with this so far.

However, PLI events get ALL the “movers and shakers” from high FCC leadership, e.g. commissioners and bureau/office chiefs, who give presentations to the honchos of industry and K Street firms without making the same information available to the public. I have previously suggested to FCC that if these presentations are prepared with federal resources they should be made available to the public and if PLI is selling videos of the presentations, the FCC should demand copies of the presentations by FCC officials as a precondition for their presentations. Such videos should then be posted for the public within a few days of the PLI event.

On the FCC website I can only find the text of Comm. McDowell’s presentation for the 2011PLI telecom event and nothing for the other FCC presenters. There are, however, copies of Chmn. Kennard’s presentation in 1997 and 1999, Comm. Tate’s presentation in 2008, Chmn. Hundt in 1997, Comm. Copps in 2006, Former WTB Chief Muleta in 2003, etc. Thus there is precedent for making the presentations public, but no consistency.

Also, NTIA Chief Strickling made public his remarks at the 2011 PLI telecom event.

So if you want to hear public officials speak on telecom policy, you can sign up now for the 2012 PLI telecom event on December 6-7 for a mere $1,595.00 OR, FCC could adopt the policy advocated above that the presentations by public officials about the public business should be made public within a few days.

Meanwhile, kudos to Comm. McDowell and NTIA’s Strickling for making their presentations public along with Ari Fitzgerald and Mark Schneider for making their thorough review available to those of us who do not work for or have not hired a K Street law firm, e.g. the “99%”.

Tags: transparency at FCC, FCC Reform, FCC website

Readers of this blog know that the problems of the FCC website have been a recurring theme. I have been quite critical of the “yellow design”. Yet until now I have not commented on the new “blue design”, except for the relatively minor FCC seal issue - since resolved.

The website has a public feedback section and many posters have been quite critical. Here are some quotes:

The new site looks very pretty, but unfortunately it appears to have been designed by graphic designers and not by anyone who actually uses the FCC's site.

Those of us who live at this site prefer the old way with everything right there. This new site is too "consumerish" and is great for Mabel Brown from Squattingpigeon, MO who is visiting the website to complain about getting calls at 2 in the morning despite her insistence that she's on the "do not call" list.. This new site (IMHO) disenfranchises the professional user.

The only way to improve this site is to bring back the old one. This new web site is just awful. It's too hard to find anything, even a simple search for a broadcast station. What a waste of taxpayer money.

Looks like a used-car sales-pitch; go back to what you had and add functionality. This looks like a site for spinning what the FCC wants to sell the public rather than a legitimate government portal to involve the public in governmental decision-making.

Very difficult to navigate as you not only moved the "stuff", but you renamed it! I spend over an hour trying to use the license "search" feature, and finally went back to the old site and found what I need in a few minutes.

The purpose of a government website such as this is not to cater top those of us who live and work “inside the Beltway” and are card carrying FCBA members. The purpose is to serve the public which includes both FCBA members and “Mabel Brown from Squattingpigeon, MO”.

Does one need to know the difference between ECFS and EDOCS in order to find public information at FCC? Does one need to know that the “Universal Licensing System” is only “universal” for the universe of WTB? Pity on anyone outside the Beltway who wants to know about or contribute to the GPS/LightSquared controversy which is hidden away on “MyIBFS” under “File Number = SATMOD2010111800239”.

The status quo ante may have been good for FCBA members who “paid their dues” but did not serve the public interest. That said, I have trouble seeing the need for multiple videos on the home page.

But the Commission has announced MyFCC which will allow people like fellow FCBA members to get directly to the information they seek. They also have be good at seeking feedback and making it public. Finally, the old “yellow design” is both still operational and prominently linked to the new design during the phase in. I think the long term scenario is that insiders will use MyFCC most of the time and those “outside the beltway” will get a site they can use too. We are not there year and feedback to the feedback page is the best way to make your voice heard.

I have written here several times about the endless clutter on the FCC website. The current website design dates to the Hundt chairmanship and may have been cutting edge at the time, but would be an embarrassment to most teenagers in this age of Facebook.

I have even given data, shown at right, that compares the number of words and number of links on FCC’s homepage compared to other agencies. While FCC’s homepage has improved slightly since this data was collected, FCC is still the leader in clutter.

Recently the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) revised its website. FERC is the successor of the former Federal Power Commission and was created within the Department of Energy as an independent body. Like FCC it has technical jurisdiction as well as nontechnical and merger jurisdiction over several industries: gas, oil, electricity, hydropower, pipelines, etc. Like FCC it has a complex workflow.

The new FERC design manages to fit this workflow into a neat homepage that efficiently send users where they need to go. It even has room for photos (but not the names) of the 5 FERC commissioners even though no other commission in the federal government other than FCC even names its commissioners on its homepage.

Somebody has to be in charge and have the authority to tell bureau chiefs and commissioners that they can not clutter up the homepage with news of their favorite pet project. A clean, well organized homepage helps everyone quickly find the information they are looking for. It is not enough to have lots of information like the FCC website has, one has to be able to find wanted information quickly.

Other commissions and agencies have this discipline, why can’t FCC?

In October 2007, this blog described the clutter on the FCC website and compared it to other agencies.

Among the points made at the time nearly 3 years ago were the following:

1) Search engine.

2) Clutter, clutter everywhere. Apparently there is no self control at all on putting more information or more links on the FCC home page.

1. Too many links for the same document.
2. No other federal commission clutters its home page with individual commissioners's links.

3) Is anyone in charge here?

4) Difficulty of finding information without prior details.

5) Lack of links to specific FCC rules or statutes.

So what has happened since? Well, the search engine has improve a lot. It would be nice to order the results by date, but at least you get results now. At one point searches on “Kevin Martin” got only a handful of links, now searches work reasonably well.

The plot at the top of this page is from the original post and compares the clutter of various agencies’ websites. At the time, FCC had 260 links on its home page, more than any other agencies surveyed, and a total of 1188 words, putting it slightly behind Interior at 1233. But FCC was clearly the clutter leader in the NE corner of the plot!

So where does FCC stand today? While your blogger doesn’t have the patience to analyze the other agencies all over again - it is clear that no other agency has the FCC’s obsolescent cluttered design - today’s results for FCC are 259 links and 1105 words. So a net decrease of 1 link and 83 words. Positive movement in the right direction, but a long way to go!

FCC also remains the only commission is the federal government that clutters its homepage with individual links for each commissioner, not to mention a separate link for “All Commissioners & Press Photos”.