[Commentary] One of the longstanding problems noted but not generally addressed before in Federal Communications Commission policy has been "how to get the word out to folks not already plugged in as insiders to file comments." Traditionally, the FCC (like most federal agencies) has taken a very passive attitude. (Indeed, the FCC has traditionally been ahead of the curve. Many federal agencies have made it downright difficult for members of the public to find out what has been going on, or to file comments.) In the last few weeks, the FCC has taken a number of steps forward on this. It started modestly with Twitter. Then came the blog, including a video blog of Chairman Genachowski. As if that weren't enough, last week the FCC launched a slew of social networking and crowdsource tools including an RSS feed, a crowdsourcing platform, and a site to track all the social media tools, such as the FCC's Facebook and Youtube pages. And, perhaps more important from the perspective of actually considering the public comments, FCC Spokesperson Mark Wigfield stated that comments on the blogs will become part of the official record. All of these are tremendous steps forward and worthy of applause.
