December 2012

House Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) previewed some of the subcommittee’s 2013-2014 agenda during a keynote speech delivered at a forum hosted by the Villanova School of Business in Washington, D.C. Chairman Walden announced the subcommittee will continue to consider policies that foster innovation, encourage investment, and protect freedom through a job-focused lens.

Chairman Walden said, “Our economy still struggles with the worst recovery since the Great Depression. It may fall even further in the face of tax hike talks, runaway spending, and the fiscal cliff. There are bright spots in the economy though, including the communications sector. The industry continues to grow, to innovate, and to invest. While the industry continues to grow, it cannot sustain this kind of investment if we continue to regulate voice, video, audio, and data services under a regime that pretends we still live in an analog world run by three networks and one phone company. We need to eliminate outdated regulations to meet the promises and challenges of the Internet era. We need to harness the free market to promote investment, encourage innovation, and create jobs. And we certainly don’t need to shackle new services with old rules.” He said the Subcommittee will o conduct oversight to ensure FCC implementation of the Jumpstarting Opportunity with Broadband Spectrum (JOBS) Act and the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act does not pick winners and losers by allocating large swaths of spectrum to favored constituencies for free thus shorting the supply of spectrum that is badly needed to meet the rising consumer demand for mobile broadband and leave public safety hanging by depriving it of the funding it needs to build out a public safety network.

In addition to continuing the efforts begun in the 112th Congress, Chairman Walden noted that the subcommittee must reauthorize satellite operators’ authority to carry broadcast television. Hearings surrounding the reauthorization will likely elicit debate about revisiting the 1992 Cable Act and 1996 Telecommunications Act, and Walden noted that the question of whether any reforms to those Acts would come in the context of the satellite television reauthorization remains to be seen. Chairman Walden concluded, “All in all, next Congress looks to be an exciting one for the Communications and Technology Subcommittee, as well as one of critical importance for our economy. I look forward to working on my panel with both parties to promote innovations, create jobs, and get our economy going again.”

Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos called his company’s newly-announced Disney deal a game changer. The deal, which will bring new and catalog titles from Disney, Marvel and Pixar to the service, marks the first time a major Hollywood studio has chosen Netflix over a traditional pay TV network. But Sarandos also made it clear that he doesn’t just want to steal away big blockbusters from the likes of HBO and Starz. Throughout the conversation, he explained that Netflix aims much higher: it wants to change television forever. Asked about how TV will look like in five years, Sarandos replied: “It’s gonna look nothing like we’re seeing today.”

So what is going to change?

• Ratings don’t matter.
• Time slots are for sports and talk.
• Viewers don’t want to wait for the next episode. And Creators love this as well.
• TV is getting more personal.

Does President Barack Obama owe his re-election to superior algorithms?

That question may sound a bit facetious, given that Mitt "47 percent" Romney at times seemed to be going out of his way to hand the election to the Chicago incumbent, and also given Mr. Obama's not-inconsiderable abilities on the campaign trail. But to political pros, Team Obama's use of data management, guided by algorithms, was no laughing matter, and the Obama re-elect's chief scientist lifted the veil somewhat on exactly what they were up to in their Prudential Building headquarters. Rayid Ghani, an artificial intelligence expert who lead the Obama data effort, told the audience that the campaign decided early on to emphasize data collection and use and stuck with it, to great effect.

On Barack Obama's very first full day as President in 2009, he issued a memorandum to the heads of federal agencies that said, in so many words, time to get serious about the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). "The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails," Obama declared. He continued, "All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA, and to usher in a new era of open Government." Two months later, Attorney General Eric Holder issued new guidelines to agency heads, urging them to streamline their FOIA process and make more information available. But despite this urging, many agencies haven't exactly prioritized FOIA compliance.

A new audit from the National Security Archive found that 62 of the 99 government agencies have not updated their FOIA regulations since then and the vast majority of those -- 56 -- have not even updated them since the passage of the OPEN Government Act of 2007, which "mandated that agencies reform their fee structures, institute request tracking numbers, publish specific data on their FOIA output, and cooperate with the new FOIA mediators at the Office of Government Information Services." Additionally, only six agencies (NARA, the EPA, Commerce, Treasury, the Federal Labor Relations Authority, and the Merit Systems Protection Board) have joined FOIAonline, a one-stop shop for making and tracking FOIA requests. Government agencies are not known for being nimble but this kind of foot-dragging is the result of more than some sort of inherent difficulty in the task: Administrators who are capable and care about FOIA can (and have) made progress. The problem lies in getting the slower agencies to follow the president's directive.