FCC Releases More Information on Proposed Move to New Headquarters
The FCC’s FY 2016 budget proposal provides additional details on commission plans to move or “restack” agency headquarters and a move to modernize its IT system, which was pushed beyond the breaking point when net neutrality comments flooded into the agency last year. The FCC also proposed to trim 45 full-time equivalent (FTE) employees between FY 2014 and 2016, with only the Office of Inspector General (IG) seeing an increase. The FCC would have its smallest staff in decades, at 1,671, under the proposal. The commission's own budget document provides much more detail than the larger administration budget released Monday (see 1502020051).
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
The FCC proposes to move from Portals I and Portals II or take over less space at the Portals 12th Street headquarters, according to the budget document. The current lease expires in October 2017, the agency said, and without some change the FCC would see its rent increase by $9 million per year. Moving or restacking “will provide up to $119 million in total savings over fifteen years.” The FCC said it wants to move into 473,000 rentable square feet -- a 28 percent reduction from the current 659,030 rentable square feet. The budget requests a one-time expenditure of $44.2 million to make the move to a new headquarters.
An accompanying chart shows that staffing levels would be the lowest since at least the early 1980s. FCC staffing levels peaked in FY 1995 at 2,112. Many parts of the FCC would see slight reductions in FTEs between FY 2014 and FY 2016, including the Enforcement Bureau, down 13 to 246, the Office of Managing Director, down 10 to 200 and the Office of Engineering and Technology, down three to 86.
The IG would get 16 additional FTEs to 56. The IG would use the funds to hire six auditors and two investigators as it tries to wrap up 70 open cases, with more on the way. “With additional criminal investigators the OIG can take on more cases and decrease the number of open cases,” the FCC said. The IG has 11 active audits underway with four ready to start, the document said. “The OIG is also planning over 50 audits of USF Programs over the next five years. The additional OIG audit staff can manage more audits and resolve more cases.”
The FCC also seeks $9.4 million for IT modernization. The biggest expenditure would be $5.8 billion to modernize filing systems. Last summer, the FCC’s system for received public comments crashed under the weight of a surge in net neutrality comments (see 1407160027).
The FCC said “like most agencies in the 1990s” it installed monolithic enterprise servers, “an approach that previously served us well.” But as these servers have aged the commission needs to “transition” by moving its IT infrastructure off premises and shifting to an “externally hosted, managed IT service environment,” the agency said. “Transitioning to a managed IT service provider will provide a foundation for the Commission's cloud-based IT modernization, offering a much higher level of service and security for both internal and external clients.” The process is underway and will be completed in FY 2016 if the requested funds are approved, the FCC said.
The FCC also seeks $3 million for the maintenance and improvement of the National Broadband Map and $600,000 for a Public Safety Answering Points (PSAP) Do Not Call Registry. The FCC said it's required to launch the registry under the 2012 spectrum law.