On December 19,
2016, John W. Davis II, the founder and CEO of Notice and Comment Inc., published
an
article in The Hill proposing an
interesting idea for the FCC to join the federal eRulemaking Program. Regulations.gov serves as the government’s
public-facing portal where federal agencies issue regulatory notices and accept
citizen responses, but unlike most federal agencies, the FCC uses its own
system for publishing rulemakings and accepting comments.
Mr. Davis says
that the wave of 4 million comments made during the Net Neutrality proceeding
showed a clear “need for modernization of the Commission’s processes.” Not only
did the FCC’s comment system crash in 2014, but “it ended up taking nine months
and an estimated $50 million for the FCC to consider the entire comment
dataset.” On the other hand, Mr. Davis endorses the federal
eRulemaking Program:
With standardization of data comes a whole new level
of immediate transparency in governance, permitting a higher degree of public
participation -- and at earlier stages of the process, such as the discovery
phase of highly common utility-pole- attachment disputes, which fall under FCC
purview. This greater degree of public data accessibility should naturally
result in more efficient complaints adjudication.
Given the possibility
that the FCC’s Open Internet Order
could get repealed by the incoming Commission, Mr. Davis says that the FCC
should join the eRulemaking Program as soon as possible. He states:
[I]f net neutrality rules are re-opened for
consideration, judging from public response to the last round, the FCC stands
to be inundated by many millions of comments. Even if the Commission’s network
does not crash again, its staff of lawyers are sure to be occupied for several
months manually reviewing and analyzing the tidal wave of data. Meanwhile,
businesses will remain in a state of uncertainty about the shape of the future
telecom regulatory environment.
The benefits in terms of cost savings, government
responsiveness, and public data transparency make the move an obvious choice.
If the FCC were to
join the eRulemaking Program, there still would remain many areas of necessary
process reform (see here,
here,
and here).
However, the proposal is certainly an interesting one that should garner consideration.
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