Open government

House Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone, Jr.

Millions of records that the Federal Communications Commission’s top lawyer once fought to hold back from state law enforcement officials now serve as key evidence in a year-long probe into cases of Americans being impersonated during the agency’s latest net neutrality proceeding.

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.

In response to a request from Representative Frank Pallone, Jr.

The House passed by bipartisan voice vote the 21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act, or 21st Century IDEA, which would require agencies to improve online customer experience by making new websites more user-friendly. The bill ultimately aims to make citizens less reliant on paper processes when interacting with federal agencies. The bill would set minimum accessibility, searchability and security standards for all new government websites, and require agencies to adopt web analytics tools to constantly improve sites’ functionality.

In 2017, Ivanka Trump sent hundreds of emails to White House aides, Cabinet officials and her assistants using a personal account, many of them in violation of federal records rules. White House ethics officials learned of Trump’s repeated use of personal email when reviewing emails gathered by five Cabinet agencies to respond to a public records lawsuit.

Whether they are Wi-Fi kiosks, urban sensors, fiber networks, or built-from-scratch “smart” neighborhoods, new urban technology deployments are under the microscope. Despite the potential of these projects to drive innovation and economic growth, they are often met with mixed reception and a myriad of justifiable questions. Take the Quayside project in Toronto led by Sidewalk Labs.

The Federal Communications Commission must stop withholding records that may shed light on fraudulent comments submitted in the FCC's network neutrality repeal proceeding, a US District Court judge ruled the week of Sept 10. The ruling came in a lawsuit filed in Sept 2017 by freelance journalist Jason Prechtel, who sued the FCC after it failed to provide documents in response to his Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) request.