FCC Silos Cause Partisanship, Lack of Analysis, Says Jamison
Increasing FCC partisanship and a decline in hiring engineers and economists are symptoms of a flawed organizational structure, blogged University of Florida Public Utility Research Center Director Mark Jamison for the American Enterprise Institute Monday. The structure “encourages a silo…
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mentality, favors people with legal training over people schooled in analysis, and muffles expert voices,” said Jamison. Similar points were made in a recent letter to the agency urging a reorganization, signed by a host of former FCC officials, advocates and academics -- including Jamison (see 1905300001). The FCC should emphasize functions such as licensing and policy instead of the current bureau division by communications medium, Jamison blogged. He cites drops in production of working papers and hosting of economic symposiums as evidence of a lack of in-house analysis of FCC decisions, plus the number of lawyers at the agency compared to engineers and economists. “Developing good analyses and displaying them in public make it harder for regulatory agencies to justify decisions with conjecture and to bias decisions toward favored constituencies,” Jamison said.