FCC Made Significant Progress, but Needs to Address Remaining Control Deficiencies and Improve Its Program

The Federal Communications Commission uses the Electronic Comment Filing System to receive public comments about proposed regulation changes. In May 2017, a surge of more than 22 million comments disrupted the system making it unavailable. We issued a Sept 2019 report with 136 recommendations for improvements in this and other FCC systems. The report was not publically released because it contains security information. This is the public version of that report—with the sensitive information removed. This report also examines the extent of FCC’s corrective actions. As of Nov 2019, FCC had made significant progress in resolving many security deficiencies by fully implementing 85 (about 63 percent) of the 136 recommendations GAO made in Sept 2019. FCC had also partially implemented 10, but had not started to implement the remaining 41 recommendations. Additionally, FCC has created remedial action plans to implement the remaining recommendations by April 2021. Until FCC fully implements these recommendations and resolves the associated deficiencies, its information systems and information will remain at increased risk of misuse, improper disclosure or modification, and loss.