Has anyone actually found anything on the FCC’s website? If so, they should consider themselves lucky. Fcc.gov has long been a source of frustration for me as I constantly find myself going in cybercircles looking for the simplest of documents or information. Apparently, I’m not alone in my frustration — Mike Marcus — a former FCC staffer — recently ranted about the site in his blog. Calling the it the “nation’s communications policy attic” he dissects the problems with the website, ranging from the lack of a usable search engine to the endless clutter. Anyone who has tried to extract information from the site — god forbid without already knowing by heart the magic docket number of the specific proceeding they are interested in — will find themselves nodding in agreement.
How ironic that the nation’s communications policy agency — whom many want to take responsibility for regulating the Internet — cannot itself communicate on the web.
Kudos to Marcus for bringing this up. When he was with the FCC, Marcus (with whom I had the opportunity to work) was among the rarest of breeds — a professional bureaucrat who fought against bureaucracy. He apparently hasn’t changed now that he’s in the private sector.
(Hat tip to Jerry Brito for pointing me to Marcus’ piece.)