John Davis

In 2018, Wisconsin was ranked 32nd for internet access, out of all 50 states. That ranking makes Wisconsin Broadband Office's plan to have internet acess for all WI residents by 2025 a lofty goal said WI State Senator Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point). At the state level, Testin said the Public Service Commission (PSC) has created broadband expansion grants for small providers that typically serve rural and underserved areas. He said between 2014-2018, the state has helped connect more than 4,000 businesses and 75,000 households with high-speed internet. 

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission’s comment consideration schedule for Network Neutrality rules consequently was seriously delayed. Six hundred staff lawyers at the Commission subsequently spent nearly nine months to gather, divvy up, read, and categorize what eventually totaled 4 million public responses to the proposed rules, costing taxpayers an estimated $4 million. What became immediately clear to me was that -- although not impossible to overcome -- the lack of consistency and shared best practices across all federal agencies in accepting and reviewing public comments was a serious impediment. The promise of Natural Language Processing and cognitive computing to make the public comment process light years faster and more transparent becomes that much more difficult without a consensus among federal agencies on what type of data is collected – and how.

I would suggest expanding the discussion around Artificial Intelligence and regulatory processes to include how the technology should be leveraged to ensure fairness and responsiveness in the very basic processes of rulemaking – in particular public notices and comments. These technologies could also enable us to consider not just public comments formally submitted to an agency, but the entire universe of statements made through social media posts, blogs, chat boards -- and conceivably every other electronic channel of public communication.

[Davis is the founder and CEO of Notice and Comment Inc., a former federal prosecutor, he founded the company while serving as the debate coach for the nationally renowned Howard University debate team.]