FCC Officials Call Agency Overhaul High Priority
The FCC’s “reform play book” includes reviews of data, internal processes and public communication, senior commission staffers told reporters Wednesday. They gave the update a day before Chairman Julius Genachowski’s first appearance at an oversight hearing by the House Commerce Committee and two days before the FCC is set to complete an internal data review. “We have a chairman here who knows this stuff, cares about this stuff, and has charged us with transforming the agency into something that is going to be amazing,” said Mary Beth Richards, special counsel to the chairman on FCC reform.
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Over the next year, Richards said, she plans to act as “coach” by coordinating reviews of the FCC’s data collection; databases and license systems; communications and workforce; ex parte and other rules and processes; and financial aspects including fees, agency funding, and funds overseen by the commission including universal service and video relay service.
The review team hopes to deal with many of the complaints about the FCC from last year’s House Commerce Committee investigation, Richards said. But she said she didn’t know whether the Hill is still pushing the issue. “I'm not getting any specific inquiries [from the Hill] right now,” added FCC Managing Director Steven VanRoekel.
The FCC is working with other government agencies to identify best practices, said VanRoekel. The Patent & Trademark Office has a good telework model, while the Transportation Department excels at e-participation, he said. The FCC may already be the best federal agency on new media like Facebook, he said. Agencies have been holding weekly calls about best practices around new media, he said, “and we're always the highlight.”
The FCC data review is due Friday, but Richards and VanRoekel said they didn’t know when it would be released publicly. The review, which is being headed by Office of Strategic Planning Chief Paul de Sa, is looking at what data the FCC collects, what it doesn’t collect but should, and how to fill data gaps, Richards said. In preparing the report, de Sa’s team met with staff around the agency, asking questions in part outlined in a July memo from the chairman, VanRoekel said. The report “will not necessarily be a deep, exhaustive action plan, but it will be a great assessment of where we are [and] where we need to go.”
Consolidating FCC data will likely be discussed, Richards said. She said she didn’t know if “that might lead to an organizational change” such as a centralized data office, or “only to easier access and more wholesome use of the data.”
As part of its systems review, the FCC plans to consolidate its databases and licensing systems, Richards said. License consolidation was started before Richards returned to the FCC this year, and will “begin to be rolled out” in October next year, Richards said.
Ex parte rules will go under the lens in a review of rules and processes being coordinated by General Counsel Austin Schlick, Richards said. The emphasis is “transparency and timeliness,” she said. “Our goal is for people to be able to find information easily,” including about what issues are pending before the commission and the status of court proceedings involving commission orders. The review team is also looking at how to deal more quickly with backlogged items, how to improve response time to Freedom of Information Act requests, and how to release reports faster, she said. For example, Richards said she talked with the Wireline Bureau about whether some of its regular reports can be released at the staff level on delegated authority, she said.
Agency restructuring is possible, but there are no “preconceived notions or decisions as to whether any reorganization is needed,” Richards said. Minor changes within the current organization could happen, she said, “for example, if one of the bureaus wants to make a change … within.”
The Office of the Managing Director is studying ways to better empower FCC staff, VanRoekel said. The FCC’s internal reform site, reboot.fcc.gov, has already received 1,000 posts from staff, and several ideas have already been implemented, he said. VanRoekel also wants to use new technologies and less paper to save staff time and keep them more focused, he said.
A planned overhaul for the FCC Web site will make it more accessible to people who don’t know the agency’s organizational structure, VanRoekel said. He wouldn’t give a date for the new site, but said to expect “look-and-feel changes” next year. The current site lacks cohesion, making it hard for the average person to navigate, he said. The new site will also be more searchable, with more machine-readable documents, he said. VanRoekel hopes to eventually add streams of FCC data that can be incorporated into other Web sites. When that happens, a real estate Web site could include FCC data on broadband availability, for example, he said.
Bureaus and offices will have an easier time managing their portals on the new Web site, VanRoekel said: “The thing I'm going to focus a lot on is really getting the bureaus and offices out of the Web site management business and into just the content management business, because today they do both.”