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Six weeks after the Federal Communications Commission completed its high profile review of the Comcast/NBCU transaction, Commissioner Meredith Baker suggested that the agency’s transaction review process should be overhauled. Her first concern is with the statutory mandate for the FCC and the antitrust enforcement agencies to review competition concurrently. Commissioner Baker raises concerns with the costs of a long merger review process. Yet she also recognizes the need for careful review. Commissioner Baker also questions whether the FCC at times goes too far afield when imposing conditions to assure that mergers serve the public interest, leading it to impose some conditions that may be unrelated to the transaction. The wide range of conditions in the typical merger order is easy to explain: it is the natural and foreseeable result of the statutory “public interest” charge to the agency.

[Baker is the FCC's Chief Economist]

The Obama Administration has asked Congress to pass an online privacy law, a set of "baseline" protections that would act as a privacy bill of rights, a significant move designed to settle the continuing digital-privacy debate. But an important factor here that has not been discussed is the timing of the president's call to Congress.

In the past year or so, digital privacy has come to the forefront, as a slew of privacy bills have bubbled up on the Hill; the Federal Trade Commission presented privacy papers along with calls for comment; and the ad industry has taken aggressive steps to implement a self-regulatory program, no doubt to stem the growing legislative sentiments. The Wall Street Journal has been running a series on data tracking, called "What They Know," that has attracted the attention of lawmakers. When the Obama Administration announced three months ago its creation of the Privacy Policy Office to evaluate possible legal measures, it was clear some form of legislation would take shape. But when? And how? Today's proposal, made by Mr. Obama's information-policy adviser, Lawrence Strickling, suggests any law should be "broad and flexible enough to allow consumer-privacy protection and business practices to adapt." It's a smart, open-ended approach, designed to draw both Democratic and Republican backers. But another reason is to ensure that the U.S. can eventually sign data accords with foreign governments, namely the European Union and countries in the Asia-Pacific region. According to insiders in Washington, the U.S. is looking to sign data treaties with both regions fairly soon, which makes getting a Capitol roll call that much more important.

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation brought key former broadband plan authors together to discuss how the federal government is enacting the plan.

“The plan was not about creating the fastest network, it was about how to setup the most diverse, ubiquitous ecosystem,” said Blair Levin, former Executive Director of the Omnibus Broadband Initiative, the team that developed the plan. While some national plans focus solely on network expansion and speed, “we wanted to figure out how to use broadband to expand education, improve healthcare and conserve energy,” Levin said.

Dr. Mohit Kaushal, former Director of Connected Health at the Federal Communications Commission, explained, “Current regulations and privacy make it difficult for innovators to create new applications to harness patient data or share information between doctors.” The healthcare reform act passed last year includes a number of Health IT provisions – the most prominent of which is the standardization of billing and electronic health records. Kaushal hopes this will create a new market using the data which customers will be able to access.

Former Energy and Environment Director of the Omnibus Broadband Initiative, Nick Sinai, echoed Kaushal’s sentiment on the sharing of data, saying, “if consumers could get their energy use and price data in a standardized format then innovators could create applications.”

Steve Midgley, Deputy Director of Education Technology at the Department of Education and former Director of Education at the FCC, praised the Commission’s quick update to the E-Rate Program, which provides funding for schools and libraries to pay for broadband. “Schools can now run digital literacy and training programs after hours,” Midgley said, “and they can access existing dark fiber networks.”

As many states are excelling as are failing in a state-by-state grading of spending transparency, according to an assessment by U.S. PIRG — the nonprofit, nonpartisan federation of Public Interest Research Groups.

Nine states garnered “A” or “B” grades, while 10 received an “F” in the second-annual survey, called Following the Money 2011. The other 31 states received a “C,” based on a points-based scorecard that tallied each state’s ability to provide spending data on its main transparency website. Categories included whether the data could be downloaded, whether it was available at the checkbook level, and whether local spending and stimulus grants were integrated, among several other factors. As a group, states are much further along than they were a year ago at making raw data that’s publicly available online, said Phineas Baxandall, senior analyst for tax and budget policy at U.S PIRG and the report’s co-author. One year ago only Kentucky got an A, and 18 states took an F — 14 states hadn't launched a transparency website at the time.