In a nutshell, the Federal Communications Commission wants to know what we think of its rules, regulations, attitudes, and plans.
It must want to hear from us because has a new online slogan:
And it’s created a new online “Electronic Filing System” which, the site says:
…serves as the repository for official records in the FCC’s docketed proceedings and rulemakings from 1992 to the present. Consumers can research, retrieve, view, and print any document in the system, including earlier non-electronic FCC documents that have been scanned into the system.
Features of this particular system include:
- Proceeding Home Page: Any place in ECFS where you see a linked proceeding name, clicking on it will take you to the ECFS “home page” for that proceeding. This page shows details about proceeding, the 40 most recent public comments in the proceeding, and all FCC filings posted in the proceeding. For example, here’s the page for Docket 04-207.
- Sorting Your Search Results: The search results are now displayed as a table. Click on any column name to sort the results by that column. Click it again to sort in the opposite direction. The column used for sorting has an arrow next to it that indicates the sort direction.
- Daily Filings Calendar: This calendar appears on the left side of the page. Clicking a date on the calendar will show all the filings that were posted online on that day.
- Export Your Search Results: Search results can now be exported as a Microsoft Excel (.xls) table. You can also print a history report of your search results in PDF, and even subscribe to an RSS feed to stay current on any proceedings or searches of interest.
- Search for Proceedings: Search proceedings by the given criteria, or just search any proceeding with activity in the last 30 days.
- Full Text Search: This allows you to search the full text of ECFS filings by keyword. You can also click “advanced” to see more options for filtering your full text search. If you need to sort, export, print, or generate RSS feeds of your search results, please use the standard ECFS search.
Wonder if the ECFS allows anonymous comments? And even if it doesn’t, can you imagine the inventive trolls it’s going to attract? The fun we they will have?
Hey, FCC, you want suggestions? You’re gonna get suggestions. We got ’em right here, buddies, so brace your silly selves.