Chairman Copps Era Plus Growing Interest in Overhaul of FCC Website

I'm still not blogging here :) (*although I think I've set a record for yearly output in just this month and a bit)

Anyhow - the Chairman Copps era has started at the FCC and we'll see how long it is until a permanent Chairman is nominated and confirmed by the Senate.

There is a growing interest in getting the current FCC website revamped.  It is really needed -- the site was cutting edge in the mid-nineties.  Unfortunately it is still mired in the mid-nineties.  I think the issue and concerns are actually getting traction with a wider audience -- there was an article in the trade paper Communications Daily today ("FCC Web Site Showing Age, Visitors Say").  A few key excerpts:

Government, industry and other officials are pushing for an overhaul of the FCC Web site. It got top honors in a 2002 Brown University report on federal Web sites, but hasn’t received a significant make-over since. With a fresh government focus on transparency, and techie Julius Genachowski expected to take the FCC’s helm, many believe the site might finally see an overhaul.

The comment from Jonathan Askin below has the right idea - but at the very least, the FCC site needs to embrace basic blogging 1.0 technologies like RSS feeds, sortable archive pages, taxonomy (tags and categories), permanent URLs (so you can always find a document) and more.

The site should embrace Web 2.0 techniques, said former FCC attorney Jonathan Askin, now an associate professor at Brooklyn Law School. Upping interactivity and including a community-building application would promote public participation in government, he said. The site should permit anyone with interest in FCC issues to easily submit ideas and comments, and enable the FCC to more rapidly and directly send its proposals and other documents to the public, he said. To enhance internal collaboration among FCC staff, the agency should implement advanced wiki tools, he said. Currently, individual bureaus rarely know what other bureaus are doing, he said.