Senate hearing highlights continued information problems at the FCC

[Commentary] Recently, all five Commissioners of the Federal Communications Commission yet again found themselves facing tough questions in a Senate oversight hearing which highlighted the partisan nature of policymaking at the FCC.

The hearing highlighted the continuing soap opera regarding whether or not FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler will step down (as is customary when a new president takes office), and whether Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel will be re-confirmed (a quid pro quo promised to get Republican Commissioner Mike O’Rielly on board). The political reality of the commissioner appointment process is at odds with the very premise of an expert, independent agency. It demonstrates that the so-called independent expert agency is subject to the same jockeying and gerrymandering as politics itself. Given the political nature of the FCC’s leadership, it may come as little surprise that the agency has difficulty accomplishing even the most basic function of telecom regulation: collecting information.

The FCC’s disregard for information requests also extends to the public. Two years ago, the Washington Post reported that in the run-up to the September 15th deadline for comments in the open internet rulemaking process, “grass-roots activists and staffers inside the FCC worked together, hour-by-hour” in an “unusual collaboration” to keep the FCC’s information technology systems running.

[Roslyn Layton is a PhD Fellow at the Center for Communication, Media, and Information Technologies (CMI) at Aalborg University in Copenhagen, Denmark.]