That's the US Government Accountability Office which has just issued a sharp criticism of the FCC for providing unequal access to nonpublic information.
Of course we're shocked, really shocked, to learn the FCC leaks inside information to cable company and phone company lobbyists. Who would have thought it?
Thanks to Michael Marcus for pointing me at this report.
Some Parties Get More Information than Others
Today GAO released a new report on FCC. In an FCC with unprecedented levels of secrecy and where the staff is held back from ... dialog with the public that was considered normal for decades, the "right people" on the outside still get access. It is just the public and the "wrong" people who can't get information.
The GAO puts it politely in their closing:
This imbalance of information is not the intended result of the Communications Act, and it runs contrary to the principles of transparency and equal opportunity for participation established by law and to FCC’s own rules that govern rulemaking.
New York Times has a story here and Forbes here. And the full report is here:
It's a sign of the times I guess that folks don't seem to be too concerned about this report. As I wrote in the Spectrum Matters blog (http://SpectrumMatters.blogspot.com) perhaps the GAO folks need to dig a little deeper into how the FCC conducts themselves than the very small sample of proceedings they investigated....
Nick Ruark
Posted by: Nick Ruark | October 09, 2007 at 10:29 PM