US Agency That Regulates Internet Service Too Poor to Build a Good Website
Just the way the GOP wants it.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler says budget constraints have forced his agency “to operate with an IT infrastructure that would be unacceptable to any well-managed business.” This is why the FCC website has crashed multiple times when inundated by people trying to submit comments on the commission’s network neutrality plan, Wheeler says.
The comments website relies on a backend system created in 1996. To handle the influx of comments, the FCC extended the deadline and set up an e-mail address that could accept comments into the official record.
And it could get worse, as Congress is fighting over whether to cut the FCC’s budget or approve a requested funding increase.
“Efforts to upgrade this IT capability were a casualty of sequestration,” Wheeler wrote in a blog post yesterday. “Most recently, the agency requested of Congress approximately $13 million for IT upgrades in the FY 2015 appropriation. I appreciate that the Senate subcommittee has provided the Commission with full funding in its FY 2015 spending bill, so that we can make these important upgrades. Unfortunately, the appropriations bill passed by the House today would fund the FCC at $17 million below current levels and $53 million below our overall budget request, dramatically undermining any effort to modernize our IT systems.”
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