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FCC Tries Something New: Making Proposals Public Before Voting on Them
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai yesterday announced a seemingly simple step to make the FCC's rulemaking process more open to the public: the FCC intends to release the full text of rulemakings before they're voted on instead of days after the vote.
Pai and fellow Republican Michael O'Rielly repeatedly complained about the secrecy of rulemakings when Democrat Tom Wheeler was chairman. Wheeler followed the practice of previous chairs by publicly releasing a summary of the proposed rules a few weeks before the FCC's meetings, while negotiations over the final text of orders continued behind closed doors. The actual text of rulemakings wasn't released until after the vote. In the case of net neutrality, Pai complained three weeks before the vote that he couldn't share the full text of the draft order with the public. The full text wasn't released until two weeks after the vote.
"Today, we begin the process of making the FCC more open and transparent," Pai said yesterday. He then released the text of two proposals scheduled for a vote at the commission's meeting on February 23, one on allowing TV broadcasters to use the new ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard and another on "giving AM radio broadcasters more flexibility in siting their FM translators."
[...] This would certainly make it easier for journalists to report on the impacts of rulemakings before they're voted on. Congressional Republicans pressed Wheeler to make releasing the text of orders in advance a standard practice, and there is pending legislation that would make it a requirement. But Wheeler said during his chairmanship that such a practice would cause long delays in rulemakings. Wheeler told Republicans in Congress in May 2015 that making the full text public in advance could make it easier for opponents to kill proposals they don't like.
[...] While Pai hasn't yet committed to making the pre-vote release of orders permanent, O'Rielly said he's confident that the pilot project will go smoothly. "If this initial attempt goes well—and I see no reason why it wouldn't—I think we will all find this to be a significant upgrade in terms of quality of feedback, quality of process, and ultimately quality of the commission's work product," O'Rielly said. O'Rielly acknowledged that the change "may make our jobs a bit more challenging," but he added that "it is the right thing to do for the American people, the practitioners before the commission and the professional press who report on commission activities."
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FCC Rescinds Claim That AT&T and Verizon Violated Net Neutrality
The Federal Communications Commission's new Republican leadership has rescinded a determination that AT&T and Verizon Wireless violated net neutrality rules with paid data cap exemptions. The FCC also rescinded several other Wheeler-era reports and actions. The FCC released its report on the data cap exemptions (aka "zero-rating") in the final days of Democrat Tom Wheeler's chairmanship. Because new Chairman Ajit Pai opposed the investigation, the FCC has now formally closed the proceeding.
The FCC's Wireless Telecommunications Bureau sent letters to AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile USA notifying the carriers "that the Bureau has closed this inquiry. Any conclusions, preliminary or otherwise, expressed during the course of the inquiry will have no legal or other meaning or effect going forward." The FCC's Wireline Competition Bureau also sent a letter to Comcast closing an inquiry into the company's Stream TV cable service, which does not count against data caps.
The FCC issued an order that "sets aside and rescinds" the Wheeler-era report on zero-rating. All "guidance, determinations, and conclusions" from that report are rescinded, and it will have no legal bearing on FCC proceedings going forward, the order said.
[...] Pai opposed Wheeler's zero-rating investigation, saying that free data offerings are "popular among consumers precisely because they allow more access to online music, videos, and other content free of charge." He has also vowed to overturn the FCC's net neutrality rules and hasn't committed to enforcing them while they remain in place. "While this is just a first step, these companies, and others, can now safely invest in and introduce highly popular products and services without fear of commission intervention based on newly invented legal theories," Republican FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly said today.
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(Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Sunday February 05 2017, @02:05PM
to see transparency being placed as a fundamental principle of governance?
The reason we have governance is delegation. We could do that job ourselves, but it's better (for the delegators) to have someone else do that job - under the assumption that this will lead to a better personal outcome at the expense of maybe a slightly worse general outcome.
Transparency is nice. But delegation isn't based on transparency, it's based on trust.
The point is: transparency itself does not prevent problems or makes them known - it merely makes them knowable. To make them known, effort is needed. It's easy to make that significant effort (obscure language in many-page documents with lots of references to other documents).
Who here makes it a daily effort to read public documents produced by their government? Now let's extend that to every department in the city, the city council, any municipal collaboration bodies, state/province level with assorted departments, and finally country level with assorted departments. No one has time to read even a fraction of all of that. So, basically, the public will get riled up when someone on the inside decides to spill the beans and point journalist / activists the way through the information jungle. Given that most policy issues are not black-and-white, the devil will be in the details. And your friendly insider will surely point out some of the details...
TL;DR: Being transparent is nice, but absolutely no guarantee of nor substitute for having good intentions towards the public you serve.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Sunday February 05 2017, @05:50PM
Agreed, but transparency is far better than the alternative we have now. It usually went something like: "An anonymous source inside the agency tells [legacy media outlet] that there are efforts to [do something horrible]." Now we sometimes get "An anonymous source inside the agency tells [blogger|Drudge] that there efforts to [do something horrible]." That is a lot less information to work with compared to someone inside or outside (the industries impacted by regulation DO read this stuff) being able to point to the actual current draft language of a law or regulation about to be voted on. There is a reason they want to keep this stuff secret.