FCC Process Reform Unlikely to Lead to Bureau Restructuring, Says Wheeler’s Staff

Efforts to reform and streamline FCC processes are unlikely to extend to restructuring the commission’s bureau system, said Diane Cornell, special counsel to Chairman Tom Wheeler, at a panel of his staff at a Practising Law Institute event Friday. Cornell, who has been assigned the task of looking into reforming the commission’s administrative processes (CD Dec 6 p3), said changing the bureau system is “not necessarily on the table.”

Restructuring the FCC bureau system would “divert a lot of energy” Cornell said, saying she’s “not a big fan” of the idea. She acknowledged the topic of changing the bureau system is raised whenever FCC process reform is discussed and said the commission is looking for ways to break the “silos” within the agency. She said she hasn’t received any suggestions for an organizational system that would be a “dramatic improvement” from the status quo. “The challenge of the bureaus at the moment is they continue to be organized in ways that reflect historical industry structure,” said FCC Chief of Staff Ruth Milkman, at a PLI panel Thursday. She said Wheeler values the role of “cross-bureau teams,” with the incentive auction task force a prime example of that.

Wheeler has a clear vision of how he wants the agency managed and operating to accomplish an “ambitious” agenda, said Milkman. “The engine of the agency is the bureaus,” said the ex-Wireless Bureau chief. “They are where the work gets done. They are driving the agenda. And the chairman’s intention is to empower the bureaus.” Delegated authority comes with responsibility, but the bureaus are in the lead, Milkman said.

Philosophically, the Wheeler FCC wants to start with a “rebuttable proposition,” Milkman said. “We want to have a hypothesis about the best approach.” Then the agency will seek facts and actively seek knowledge from people who want to test the agency’s thinking, she said. “We want to start with a view, an opinion, on where we ought to be headed.”

The FCC will review a report on the staff’s plan for IP transition trials, said Milkman. “Some people have suggested these are technology trials,” but they will really be “values trials,” to test ideas about interconnection, access, and other such issues, said Milkman. “Here’s what it isn’t: It isn’t a regulatory-free zone.” But not all rules from 10 or 20 years ago may be relevant going forward as part of what Milkman called “the competition agency.” The commission will look at rulemakings and transactions to “protect and promote competition, because we continue to believe competition is the best way to get economic growth, innovation” and the prices and choices consumers want, she said.

Special Counsel for External Affairs Gigi Sohn’s role will involve building coalitions in industry and the public interest sphere to support Wheeler’s goals, and making sure the commission works well with other administrative agencies, she said at the Friday event. “Coalitions are vital” for the commission to accomplish such large-scale goals as improving broadband in schools, Sohn said. The commission needs to bring “strange bedfellows” of different viewpoints together to accomplish Wheeler’s goals, she said. Sohn wants Wheeler to expand the FCC’s reach “beyond Washington” to other parts of the U.S. and to groups that aren’t typically engaged with FCC policy, such as in Silicon Valley or Indian tribes, she said. “It can’t just be the usual suspects."

Wireless aide Renee Gregory said Wheeler spends most of his time on the incentive auction, and stressed the difficulty of the two-sided auction process, and creating a user-friendly “world’s first software and technology platform” for administering it. “Realistically, not everyone will be thrilled with every outcome,” Gregory said. She said she believed the auction would be successful. Around the time of the PLI panel, Wheeler wrote on the agency’s blog that the auction won’t happen until 2015, a year later than the agency’s earlier target. (See separate report above in this issue.) The agency under Wheeler will also be “very focused” on unlicensed spectrum, along with the licensed spectrum involved in the auction, said Gregory.