FCC Hunting Data to Meet Commerce Data Request Deadline
FCC officials have spent two weeks winnowing records and compiling data to meet Wednesday’s deadline for information sought in a bipartisan Commerce Committee oversight inquiry into everything from the rulemaking process to key personnel decisions, according to people familiar with the effort. “Tomorrow is the deadline,” a committee spokesman said. “Committee staff look forward to reviewing records that are produced by the Commission. The Committee will work with the FCC to ensure they comply with the Committee’s request.”
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At the investigation’s outset committee sources said they might let the deadline slip if the FCC couldn’t deliver all the data, provided the agency showed a “good faith” effort. That’s what the committee has done in the past on similar data requests, and it’s not unusual for material to take longer to compile in proper form, Hill sources said. Given the breadth of the data request, sources said they would be surprised to see the FCC meet its deadline.
Answering the Hill request, a massive two-week effort, has distracted the FCC from its work on other issues, agency sources said. As of late Tuesday commissioners’ offices didn’t have available all the e-mails they need to sort from the period involved, they said.
“It has been a fair amount of work,” said an FCC source. “In our office we've been trying hard to make sure we provide everything that may be responsive to their request and it’s a pretty broad request. We don’t have most of what they're looking for.” It takes hours to review thousands of e-mails and documents, the source said, reflecting comments by other eighth floor officials. “There aren’t a lot of paper files anyway, but just reading through e-mails to see if something should be included or not takes a lot of time.”
“You have to read and reread 15 times over the request,” another FCC source said: “You have to ask, ‘Are there things I can rule out that I know I don’t have anything on…’ Day- to-day work is not getting the full attention.”
FCC staffers and commissioners don’t have counsel to consult on what to send to the Hill, though all legal advisors and three of five commissioners have law degrees. “You have to go with your own instincts,” an FCC source said. “You've got to go through all your e-mails,” another FCC official said. “And we e-mail a lot.”
FCC officials have been searching for e-mails relevant to orders, rulemakings and other items that delayed monthly meetings, according to an official familiar with the process. Such searching is believed to have involved hours of work by each FCC staffer who must comply with the request, said the official. That official personally hadn’t had problems finding e-mails during the search.