Open government

Brian Lamb, the man who put Congress on live television, reflects on the results and explains why the Supreme Court ought to be next.

We have more work do if want to truly modernize the public file system that is the subject of our decision April 12. These filings include things like station authorizations, contour maps, ownership reports, equal employment opportunity filings, reports on children’s television programming, materials related to investigations and complaints, and joint sales agreements.

The New York Times Company is pressing a judge to order the Federal Communications Commission to turn over information about comments submitted in the 2017 net neutrality proceeding. “The logs will likely reveal the true extent of the fraud that infected the net neutrality rulemaking,” the newspaper argues in court papers filed April 10 with US District Court Judge Lorna Schofield in the Southern District of New York. “In the wake of Special Counsel’s Robert Mueller’s recent indictment of 13 Russian individuals and three Russian companies for interfering with U.S. elections and the U.S.

The 2019 Legislative Branch Appropriations Bill Conference Report encouraged the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) to reorganize its technology and science function by creating a new office within GAO and to report to the Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittees on plans for doing so. In January 2019, GAO created the Science, Technology Assessment, and Analytics (STAA) team to build on its decades-long track record of providing Congress with science and technology (S&T) analysis.

The Federal Communications Commission is asking a judge to reject The New York Times Company's request for information about comments submitted to the agency in its 2017 net neutrality proceeding. The agency argues that the data sought by the Times -- including IP addresses associated with comments -- would compromise commenters' privacy. The FCC also says it can't provide the information sought by the news company without undertaking new research.

After repealing the Open Internet Order and ending net neutrality, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai doubled down on his efforts to ruin online culture. He released a cringe-inducing YouTube video titled "7 Things You Can Still Do on the Internet After Net Neutrality" that featured his own rendition of the "Harlem Shake" meme. Muckrock editor JPat Brown filed a Freedom of Information Act request for emails related to the video, but the FCC rejected the request, claiming the communications were protected "deliberative" records.

House Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone, Jr.

President Donald Trump signed the OPEN Government Data Act into law. The transparency measure was tucked inside a larger bill to support evidence-based policymaking. The law requires agencies to release all non-sensitive data to the public in a format that allows for easy data analysis and largely prohibits them from restricting how that information can be used. It also mandates the Office of Management and Budget help agencies stand up “comprehensive data inventor[ies]” that include metadata on every dataset they publish.

Democrats on the House Commerce Committee are pushing back on a report by the Federal Communications Commission Inspector General finding no evidence of a "concealment or cover-up" by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai in communications with the White House regarding the failed Sinclair-Tribune merger.

The Federal Communications Commission has once again refused a New York Times request for records that the Times believes might shed light on Russian interference in the net neutrality repeal proceeding. The Times made a Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) request in June 2017 for FCC server logs and sued the FCC in September 2018 over the agency's ongoing refusal to release the records. The court case is still pending, but the Times had also appealed directly to the FCC to reverse its FoIA decision.