For the record, I have no intention of actively blogging on this site as (1) I don't have the time to do it right, and (2) like a lot of corporations and probably a lot of government agencies, I'm not entirely sure the FCC is really ready to deal with unfiltered blogging from its employees. But I'd like to post when I think I can do so without causing unnecessary angst for the powers that be.
The current Chairman of the FCC, Michael Powell, announced just this past Friday that he would be leaving the Commission. Attached to his statement was a long list of accomplishments that took place under his watch. It is a sign of the amazing times we live in that so many of those accomplishments include facilitating the providing of new or just plain better services to consumers.
One of the things that Chairman Powell did last year was start a blog. Now some may quibble as to whether the entries that he posted were really “blogging” but his writing at Always On was open to comments from the public that appeared on the same page as the post(s) from Chairman Powell. And he wrote a lot given the demands on his time. As far as heads of government agencies go, I’m not even aware of other secretaries or commissioners engaged in blogging.
His topics included a statement of his regulatory philosophy; consideration of intermodal competition; indecency law; VoIP and Wi-Fi; broadband penetration; convergence; and Skype.
I find the fact that I can find very sophisticated posts from experts on topics of telecommunications, media, technology, etc throughout the web to be incredibly useful. The web really has opened up the world beyond the beltway to those of us working within it in a significant way. I’m not saying that everyone in DC avails themselves of the opportunity but many do. What may be more difficult is using the web to more fully open up inside DC to the rest of the world. You may have noticed a disclaimer to at least one of Chairman Powell’s blog posts:
FCC regulations prohibit me from hearing about or discussing certain topics that may come before me as a decisionmaker – such as matters that deal with the particular rights of specific persons or companies. As a result, I will focus my attention in my postings on the general pros and cons of telecom policy, rather than on the whys and wherefores of individual enforcement or licensing matters. Also, to help inform others, my staff will be forwarding comments that may be relevant to open Commission proceedings to their respective public files.
I actually don’t have any firsthand knowledge about any discussions Chairman Powell and his office had concerning legal issues for writing blog entries nor how the above policy was actually carried out. But in a practical sense it does raise some good questions for policies of openness in government and whether it is time for Congress to take a real look at having the law recognize more fully the digital, online, connected world we live in.
It took me all of 10 minutes to find Chairman Powell’s posts (and that’s only because Always On limits some of the more useful search functions to paying members so I had to poke around a bit on the site) and while the FCC website is solid and very useful, I wonder if there’s a more effective and efficient way to ensure public access then to require what seems to be the equivalent of mandatory cross-posting of everything to the FCC site. I don’t have any answers here, but it seems to me that government policy should be to clear roadblocks for senior officials to communicate freely and openly with the public at large. I’d hate for legal restrictions based on a pre-Internet world to keep that from happening.