Gov performance

The Metropolitan Information Exchange (MIX) is a close-knit association of CIOs from U.S. cities and counties with populations over 100,000. Gathering annually for over 51 years, members focus on sharing insights and cases from their own communities in order to build their collective knowledge and capabilities as leaders.

Chairman Ajit Pai and the rest of the Federal Communications Commission took hits from both sides of the aisle in a House Communications Subcommittee oversight hearing Dec 5. Democratic Reps were particularly pointed in their criticisms of the FCC over broadband mapping, internet deregulation, merger approvals, and the funding cap on the Universal Service Fund, among other issues.

GAO was asked to review funding reforms and fraud controls the Federal Communications Commission has implemented for rate-of-return carriers. This report examines the extent to which FCC: (1) has implemented funding reforms specific to rate-ofreturn carriers, and (2) is managing fraud risks for the high-cost program in accordance with leading practices. One of the reforms that GAO reviewed established a funding mechanism for the carriers whereby FCC determines the level of financial support to provide the carriers based on cost and revenue estimates produced by a model.

The Federal Communications Commission's extremely hands-off approach to broadband-customer complaints has alarmed Rep Mike Quigley (D-IL). Rep Quigley wrote a letter to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai in Aug after learning of a Frontier customer who was forced to pay a $10-per-month rental fee for a router despite buying his own router. It turns out that the FCC hasn't proactively forwarded any broadband-billing complaints to the Federal Trade Commission despite the agencies' working agreement. But Chairman Pai's initial response to Rep Quigley didn't reveal that tidbit.

Eleven House Commerce Committee Democratic Reps sent a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai expressing growing concern that the FCC is failing to protect consumers’ privacy by refusing to hold wireless carriers accountable for unauthorized disclosures of consumers’ real-time location data. Over a year ago, in May 2018, it was reported that major wireless carriers were selling consumers’ real-time location data to third-party data aggregators.  This location data was then easily purchased by other private companies, such as bounty hunters.

The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations chaired by Sen Rob Portman (R-OH) held a hearing the same day it released a bipartisan report that shows regular misuse of the systems that 14 federal agencies use to collect comments from the public on proposed rules. Agency officials told lawmakers they are exploring modern technologies like CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA (which prompt humans to prove that they are humans) and developing new approaches to reform Americans’ ability to leave digital feedback—and trust that their comments are seen and voices are heard—using federal comment platforms.

After the Federal Communications Commission received nearly 24 million comments in the course of just one rulemaking proceeding in 2017 and its website crashed due to the volume of comments submitted simultaneously, the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations initiated a review of federal commenting systems to understand their flaws and develop recommendations to improve them. The Subcommittee  found:

Building new broadband infrastructure is a big investment for any municipality. While the cost of that investment shouldn’t be overlooked, it’s equally important to consider the significant cost savings that can be reaped with publicly owned infrastructure. Many cities have slashed the cost of connecting their schools to broadband by opting to build their own infrastructure, instead of continuing to pay a private provider for connections. Portland (OR), for example, had been paying an incumbent provider $1,310 per month for  10 Mbps connections to schools.

An internal memo on cybersecurity warns that "the White House is posturing itself to be electronically compromised once again." That's after at least a dozen top- or high-level officials have resigned or been pushed out of a cybersecurity mission that was established under former-President Barack Obama to protect the White House from Russian hacking and other threats. Warnings by officials from the former Office of the Chief Information Security Officer (OCISO) — which in July was folded into the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) — suggest new intelligence vulnerabilities. The

Some public and private stakeholders argue that financial matters such as return on investment (ROI) must be heavily considered when expanding broadband to unserved populations.