FCC Hits ‘Reboot’ as Agencies Open Web Sites
The FCC and NTIA launched new Web sites Thursday as government agencies work to meet President Obama’s openness directive (WID Dec 9 p4). The FCC took the wraps off its long-awaited Reboot.FCC.gov site, which includes an official FCC blog and a discussion forum for users to submit, vote and comment on ideas for reforming FCC processes and redesigning the agency’s Web site. Meanwhile, NTIA and Rural Utilities Service (RUS) revealed BroadbandMatch, a forum for broadband stimulus applicants to connect and form partnerships.
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The FCC wants ideas on how to improve citizen interaction with the agency, the agency said Thursday. “Transforming the Commission into a model of excellence in government is one of my top priorities,” said Chairman Julius Genachowski in a statement. “The success of this transformation depends on strong public participation throughout the process. With the launch of Reboot.FCC.gov, our goal is to get input from all corners of the country on ways to improve usability, accessibility, and transparency across the agency."
NTIA and RUS hope BroadbandMatch will help applicants “combine expertise and create stronger proposals,” the agencies said. Those interested in applying for broadband funding may go to match.broadbandusa.gov and post a profile detailing how they can contribute to a broadband project. Potential applicants may also search for “other stakeholders whose skills and resources match their needs,” the agencies said.
“It’s like a matchmaking service where interested parties can discover each other to pursue their mutual interests,” said RUS Administrator Jonathan Adelstein in a statement. “It will help in locating community partners and establishing new relationships that will foster better broadband service in areas of the country that really need it.” NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling said “many applicants” in the first round “wanted to form partnerships but didn’t know how best to locate other organizations with similar aims and complementary resources."
Genachowski picked a senior leadership team to tackle five areas of agency reform: (1) redesign of FCC.gov, (2) data, (3) citizen engagement, (4) systems such as the Consolidated Licensing System and Electronic Comment Filing System, and (5) rules and processes. The FCC launched an online clearinghouse of public data at Reboot.FCC.gov/data, it said. FCC staff working on rules and process want input on ways to “improve the quality of agency decision-making, reduce backlogs, and enhance the public’s ability to understand and participate in Commission proceedings,” the agency said.
The FCC Web site, last redesigned in 2001, “is outdated and beginning to unravel as FCC web developers become anxious to keep pace with technological innovations,” said FCC staffer David Kitzmiller on the Reboot.FCC.gov blog. The FCC has done well to expand the “volume and quality of information” on the site, but “the usability of the site design has not improved along with it,” Kitzmiller said. And most pages on the site use “coding techniques now considered inefficient compared with modern conventions,” he said. FCC staff on the redesign are studying statistics about how people use the Web site, but want fresh feedback from users through the Reboot site “to fill in the data gaps,” he said.
The Reboot site is a “great step forward” for the FCC Web site, but the agency still has “a long way to go,” said Jerry Brito of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Brito, a long-time critic of the old FCC site, said it’s clear the FCC recognizes it needs to make changes, and applauded the agency for making “a lot of structured data” available to the public. However, the quality of the sites’ XML data feeds could still be cleaned up so they're more readable and intuitive, he said.