Genachowski Rallies FCC Troops at Broadband Workshop Kickoff
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski urged staff to collaborate and not be afraid to make mistakes as they get to work on the national broadband plan. He held an all-hands meeting Wednesday to introduce new staffers on the broadband team (CD Aug 5 p12) and kick off broadband workshops starting Thursday. “From this point forward, there really is no letting up,” he said.
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Genachowski hopes to tackle low-hanging fruit that can forward the broadband effort before the commission releases its final plan, he told reporters after the meeting. The broadband team “will be looking for those opportunities as we move forward,” he said. “February is going to come pretty quickly, so we'll absolutely be focused on delivering a great plan at that time, but if there are opportunities to move forward before then, we will.”
The plan isn’t written, but don’t expect anything in the plan to be “self-effective,” Genachowski said. Congress required the FCC to make a strategy for the country, he said. “If there’s something that the commission needs to do, it will probably follow the plan. If there’s something recommended to Congress, obviously Congress will have to take it up.”
Genachowski told staffers he understands the pressure of a “looming deadline,” and said he wants to make them feel empowered. Getting the plan right “is going to take a commission-wide effort,” he said. Staff should know that their ideas and work matters, he said.
The commission plans to experiment with a variety of approaches to encourage participation in the process, and that means mistakes will be made, Genachowski said. “I expect them, they are inevitable, don’t sweat it.” The agency must learn from mistakes, and replicate successes, he said.
Blair Levin, executive director of the broadband plan, agreed that mistakes will be made. There already have been some, he said. Staff has already had to restructure the workshops on adoption, he said. The first workshop “will be great, but the last will be even better because we'll learn with each one,” he said.
The biggest hurdle to overcome is “patterns of thought,” said Levin. Based on initial comments on the plan, it seems people are still thinking about things the same way they were 10 years ago, he said, and many companies are writing things “that could be summarized as ‘Aren’t we wonderful?'” That doesn’t solve the problem Congress assigned, he said.
Stakeholders must “step up” and take the process “as seriously it deserves,” Genachowski agreed. “I don’t think that’s happened yet, but I'm confident that it will.” The national plan is one of the most important efforts ever undertaken by the FCC, he said. Spurring broadband is tantamount to building out railroads, electricity and other essential infrastructure, he said. Broadband will create jobs, and forward the country’s goals for education, healthcare and economic growth, he said.
Workshops will employ new webcasting technologies to allow more participation, said Krista Witanowski, workshop coordinator. The FCC’s old webcasting system only allowed for up to 200 people online at one time. The regulator plans to use WebEx, a conferencing program that will allow more active participation, she said. Workshops will also be streamed through Second Life, the online virtual life simulator, she said.
The meeting was the first to be attended by new commissioners Meredith Baker and Mignon Clyburn. They didn’t participate. The commission had a banner in the building’s lobby welcoming Clyburn.