Newer FCC Website Said Lacking Compared With Old Site That Dies Feb. 3

Some longtime communications lawyers have shied away from using www.fcc.gov/ except when the old site redirects them to it, they said. They pointed to the search mechanism for all commission staff (http://bit.ly/1alRMFt), navigating to the webpages of bureaus and offices, and the old site’s headlines archive of major orders, news releases and the like (http://bit.ly/19sJ256). Starting Feb. 3, such functions can be reached by bookmarks, said a posting on the old site. Some respondents said they plan to set up such bookmarks, as they weren’t using them now. One advantage of the new site is that it allows searching within filings on the Electronic Comment Filing System, something the transitional version of ECFS doesn’t allow, said Free Press Research Director Derek Turner. “It’s made my life a lot easier, being able to full text search."

The old site does a better job of allowing quick navigation to reports, functions and other features many communications lawyers frequently use, they said. Force of habit also makes change hard, some acknowledged. The transition website “was like having a methadone clinic” for addicts to the site, said Fletcher Heald radio and TV lawyer Howard Weiss. “It made life so much easier.” The new site was criticized by House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., during an FCC oversight hearing (CD July 11/12 p3), and early on in 2011 when it was in beta version it drew many complaints as the FCC then-Managing Director Steve VanRoekel said most visitors to the site aren’t frequent users conditioned to the original version (CD June 6/11 p2). “People in D.C. use the old site quite a bit,” said FCC Consumer Advisory Committee Chairwoman Debra Berlyn, among those who say they infrequently use the new site.

Berlyn said she hopes the CAC gets a briefing from FCC technical staff on the old site’s homepage going away, so consumer groups represented on the committee can hear about it, much like an FCC event last month where tech staff discussed the changes with industry. “It would be perhaps an idea to talk about what it is in that old website that was most useful, and perhaps to take some of the best elements of that and bring that forward to the permanent site,” said Berlyn, who represents the National Consumers League on the panel. “You are pushed to the new site quite a bit” from the transitional one, so that’s where she uses the newer version, said Berlyn, who runs Consumer Policy Solutions, which puts on educational and other programs for nonprofit and corporate clients.

The old site “was very clearly marked” to find FCC staffer contact information including email addresses, said Berlyn. How to file comments and use ECFS was “very easy to find,” she said. Media activists and others who don’t work in Washington and sometimes participate in communications policy issues had “just as hard a time finding” things on the new as the old, said Turner. “It’s hard to give them a lot of flak here” for the switch “because the old site was far from consumer friendly,” said Turner. On both version, it’s hard to find out who is licensed to use a particular piece of spectrum in an area or owns a station, though it’s “really obvious how to file a complaint or take a broadband speed test,” he said.

The transitional page use is small compared to other FCC pages, according to data shared with last month’s technical briefing and an attendee. Less than 2 percent of the FCC’s site visitors enter it via a transition page, said a handout that Fletcher Heald broadcast lawyer Peter Tannenwald shared with us. “Statistically, using Google Analytics, the number of people who use the transition home page is miniscule,” he said he heard: “A lot of people use other transition pages and have bookmarks for them. Those pages are not being phased out” now. “Transition home links reduced by over 80 percent -- no complaints,” and “headline functionality now on par with transition headlines,” said the handout. “All home page links point to pages that are on the new site."

Those in the industry who complained about the old site’s loss on the FCC webinar “had no good response to the FCC’s point that Google Analytics shows that the professionals use bookmarks for pages deeper into the FCC website and rarely look at the transition home page,” said Tannenwald, who still uses the old site to access headlines, bureau homepages and databases. “I don’t have a hundred bookmarks for all the inside pages,” and “in the long run, the test will be how friendly the FCC makes www.fcc.gov to use by professionals,” he said. The agency should simplify it, “because it is too heavily laden with graphics and jams up mobile devices” not using Wi-Fi, he said. Adding functionality to that site, and others maintained by companies as is the trend in the U.S., often complicates things, said Weiss. “My brain just doesn’t work that way.” He gives the agency credit for waiting several years after the new site began to do away with the old. “They gave adequate notice,” he said. “They didn’t have to do that."

The Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance appreciates that the old site will remain available by bookmarks “for efficiency purposes,” said Vice President-Regulatory Affairs Micah Caldwell. “We still rely on the transition.fcc.gov website for a lot of things.” For what she doesn’t know how to find another way, she uses the transition site, said Caldwell. It’s human to get angry about having to re-learn something, said Turner of the new site that he called not “that great.” He’s not personally angry at the situation because, he said, “like anything in life, you have to learn how to do things.”