FCC to Launch Another Revised Website Next Year
The FCC is getting set to release another new website, Mary Ellen Seal, FCC executive director for modernization, told the agency’s Consumer Advisory Committee (CAC) Monday. The prototype is to be delivered to the FCC in late December, agency officials said. The new website is expected to be fully functioning in mid-2015, said Seal.
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Seal conceded that the FCC’s revised website, launched in 2011 under then-Chairman Julius Genachowski ([see 1106060097), never clicked with regulatory lawyers and others who must use the site daily. People who have to use the 2011-revised FCC website often “really liked the old website,” she said. “It was easy to find things and it was laid out a lot better.” The agency is working with Spencer Gerrol and his firm, Spark Experience, to improve the site's search capabilities. The goal is to develop a system where an FCC search will be as close as possible to doing a search using Google, Seal said.
Gerrol, who has done work for Google, said his company has done extensive research to determine who uses the FCC website, how they expect to find information and how they use that information. Tens of thousands of users have to be taken into consideration, he said. His company created a set of “personas” of model users so it can consider their interests as the site is being developed, he said. The company also did usability tests, observing how people use the site, Gerrol said. The first step was deciding how to organize the data, and his company is now working out the overall appearance of the site, he said. Gerrol told CAC members the goal is to develop a site that's fully accessible to the blind.
The FCC is also improving its filing system, including its Electronic Comment Filing System, Seal said. The ECFS was built in the 1990s “and has been struggling to keep up with the onslaught of feedback we’re been getting from the private sector,” she said. FCC systems also were not built with security in mind, Seal said. The commission plans to move most of its IT infrastructure from FCC headquarters to an offsite data center, she said. FCC data will then be moved to the cloud, she said.
The FCC is also getting set to launch a revised consumer complaint system, said Michael Carowitz, deputy chief of the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau. “The punch line is we’re getting pretty close,” he said. “We’re weeks away from putting something in place.” The goals are to make it easier for consumers to file a complaint, streamline the processing of complaints and make more complaint data publicly available, he said. The FCC will go from 19 complaint forms to one complaint intake system, said Carowitz.
“The website and working on the website was something that the CAC brought up as an issue years ago,” said CAC Chairwoman Debra Berlyn, with Consumer Policy Solutions. The complaint process is something the CAC “has brought up time and time again,” she said.