ECFS Changeover To Happen Soon, FCC Says

10 to 500), most filed by communications practitioners,” wrote Alison Cutler, chief of the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau, and Chief Information Officer David Bray. But last year’s net neutrality proceeding had nearly 4 million comments from consumers and others, they said. “Today, the public expects to be able to easily submit comments in digital form and to have convenient access to all the other input received by the Commission, and the Commission needs a robust system capable of meeting the public’s expectations.” The FCC will do tutorials on the new ECFS starting Tuesday, they said. “We strongly encourage everyone who uses ECFS to participate in one of these demos to become familiar the new system and its features,” they said. “We will formally announce the final switch-over date two weeks before the transition.” They confirmed the FCC will no longer convert files to a PDF format (see 1605130046): "Filings will be made available to the public in their native formats." Another change is that groups that want to encourage mass filings will now have a process for filing them directly at the agency. Protect Internet Freedom recently accused the FCC of failing to post comments by its members opposing controversial proposed ISP privacy rules (see 1605110058). Agency officials blamed technical issues and the software the group had been using to file comments.