Brain Drain, Admin Failures Threaten the FCC's Role

coondoggie writes "The Federal Communications Commission has brain drain and administration problems that could decrease its effectiveness at a time when advanced service technologies such as wireless and broadband present significant regulatory challenges. On the brain drain front, a report out today (PDF) from watchdogs at the Government Accountability Office stated that from fiscal year 2003 to 2008, the number of engineers at the FCC decreased by 10%. Similarly, the overall number of economists decreased by 14%. While the total number of engineers and economists in the workforce has decreased from 2003 to 2008, the percentages remained the same. The GAO also criticized the FCC's public comment policy, saying, 'While FCC relies heavily on public input to inform its decisions, it tends to do so without giving the public access to the actual text of a given proposal. If parties are able to submit vague summaries that may not fully reflect meetings between FCC officials and outside parties, then stakeholders will continue to question whether commission decisions are being influenced by information that was not subject to public comment or rebuttal and that, in some cases, is submitted just before a commission vote.'"

Comments

Wonder how this is Obama's fault

[BlueBoxSW.com]

(wait, nevermind. talking politics on Slashdot is a bad idea.)

Re:Hmm

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Well, for the second time in 20 years, the Democrats, with full power, went way too far down the same rejected road: health care nationalization and "Fairness Doctrine", and just got bitchslapped, again, yesterday.

To quote Ellie in Contact, "Which is more likely, that you just 'can't get the message out'? Or that your message got out, loud and clear?"

One assuages your ego, and therefore should be suspect.