FCC Order Would Make More Filings Available Online
All submissions to the FCC must be available online, with staff required to assign docket numbers to all proceedings other than those in “exceptional circumstances,” the commission said in an order released late Friday. It’s the second order approved by commissioners last week that the agency said would help improve public access to FCC materials. “These two items should result in significant efficiency and fairness improvements for the Commission and for those who do business with us,” said FCC General Counsel Austin Schlick.
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The order follows one on Wednesday requiring ex parte filings anytime a lobbying meeting occurred (CD Feb 4 p2). The latest order extended some of the requirements of the ex parte ruling by requiring that filings be made in electronic, machine-readable format. Filings should now be searchable, the commission said. “Trying to get paper at the commission is very difficult, trying to get stuff electronically at the commission is getting easier and easier,” noted lawyer Howard Weiss of Fletcher Heald, who filed comments in the proceeding on behalf of the FCBA’s Access to Government Committee. The FCC’s goal was to adopt the ex parte order and the latest one together, “and I think that was wise, since the two dovetail,” he said.
The latest order also streamlines some FCC processes. Parties to a proceeding don’t need to be served with documents, such as pleadings and orders, by mail and instead can receive the paperwork in an electronic format, when such service is required. “Mindful of the more than three thousand open dockets at the Commission,” the order adopted a proposal made last year that staff should be able to close inactive proceedings, with that decision to be made by the Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau in consultation with the relevant office or bureau. “Proceedings that are candidates for termination might include dockets in which no further action is required or contemplated and dockets in which no pleadings or other documents have been filed for several years,” said the order, at http://xrl.us/bihpng.
Such termination will include “dismissal as moot of any pending petition, motion, or other request for relief in that proceeding that is procedural in nature or otherwise” doesn’t address the proceeding’s merits, the agency said. Public notice must be given of docket closings. There are 2,163 FCC proceedings that have been pending more than five years, Chairman Julius Genachowski wrote Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine last year (CD Dec 6 p12). Authority was also delegated to commission staff to dismiss or deny “repetitive” petitions for reconsideration, the agency said. The order means lawyers will have fewer dockets to update their clients about, Weiss said, as “things just linger and linger."
"Many Commission proceedings are not docketed,” the order said, something it will remedy. “Often, the record in non-docketed proceedings is in paper format only, thus precluding electronic searches and rendering it difficult for interested persons to follow and participate in these proceedings.” The order foresees “prompt migration” of newly made complaints about common carriers under Section 208, new pole attachment complaints under Section 224, customer proprietary network information proceedings, cable special relief proceedings and those on over-the-air reception devices. All radio or TV station applications for license renewal or transfer that another party has sought to block also will be docketed, as the Media Access Project (MAP) sought, the FCC said.
"This is a small but useful measure to promote transparency at the commission,” MAP Senior Vice President Andrew Schwartzman said of the order. “The difficulty of filing and of viewing other people’s submissions in broadcast application proceedings has been a significant obstacle for public interest groups and citizens.” On non-docketed proceedings, often “you don’t know about them, and if you do know about them, getting hold of the filings is very difficult,” he said. Mandating filings be machine readable will end the “occasional abuse where parties made it difficult to access data,” he said.
The FCC also said filings shouldn’t be locked or password protected and that redacted versions must be electronically filed to accompany paper-filed submissions that contain confidential information. The order’s rule revisions generally are “pretty minor ‘housekeeping’ changes,” said President Randolph May of the Free State Foundation, which often opposes regulation. “In some instances, by broadening the use of docketed proceedings and electronic filings, they are positive steps that should increase efficiency and transparency. But frankly, the practice rule changes are very small potatoes in relation to the need for the commission to focus on eliminating substantive regulations that no longer make sense,” May said, and “viewed in this light, they are almost a diversion.”