Federal Communications Commission

As a regulatory agency, the issues surrounding the Information Technology challenges are, as everyone is prone to saying, quite different. Of course, everyone is different, but the FCC has the responsibility for a complex set of “products”. The maintenance of the licensing for bandwidth and the adequate distribution of bandwidth are not issues that other agencies deal with. Besides the licensing of ham radio operators, other radio, broadcast, wireless, satellite, experimental, cable, and yes, there are more:

ASR, BPIF, CDBS, COALS, CORES, CSRS, DIRS, EAFS, EA, ECFS, EDOCS, ELS, ETFS, GenMen, GMRS, HAM, KDB, KIDVID, LMS, MyIBFS, NORS, RLD, SADCS, TCB, TCNS, ULS, VPD

The official mission is:

The Federal Communications Commission regulates interstate and internation­al communications by radio, television, wire, satellite and cable in all 50 states, the Dis­trict of Columbia and U.S. territories. An independ­ent U.S. government agency overseen by Congress, the commission is the United States' primary authority for communica­tions law, regulation and technological innovation. In its work facing economic opportunities and challenges associated with rapidly evolving advances in global communications, the agency capitalizes on its competencies in:

• Promoting competition, innovation and investment in broadband services and facilities

• Supporting the nation's economy by ensuring an appropriate competitive framework for the unfolding of the communications revolution

• Encouraging the highest and best use of spectrum domestically and internationally

• Revising media regulations so that new technologies flourish alongside diversity and localism

• Providing leadership in strengthening the defense of the nation's communications infrastructure

The average age of the systems at FCC on the arrival of our new CIO in 2014 was 12 years. Many of the systems were running unsupported operating systems and software and on hardware long past it’s due date, and yet it could not be upgraded because of the age of the operating systems. The other issue was the “technology”; all home grown and written by the same contractor that had been at the FCC for 20 years. This was enough to keep anyone up at night.

  ​Although “big data” is the name of the game, providing a useful, meaningful and plausible approach to legacy database access is sorely missing    

The first thing to do was to prove that newer technologies and approaches were possible, so a new complaints system, the FCC receives many complaints ranging from bad service by providers to indecent exposure on television to opinions on net neutrality. A SaaS platform was chosen and it was put in place in less than 90 days, vs. one year for custom development, at 1/6 the cost of a “homegrown” system. The second phase was moving all email and communications out of the building to a provider to facilitate moving the data center to a co-lo facility, government owned, industry run, which was outside of the nuclear ring from DC. The obvious trends we are following are SaaS, PaaS and IaaS. We chose a new development platform and a new software platform which could combine 22 services onto a common backbone.

The challenge remains making the overlapping, as well as diverse, data available from a single view. With over 80 silo’ed databases we are working to develop a seamless approach for the FCC to deliver its data to consumers as well as staff. The inability of vendors to truly address database consolidation issues, or at least access, remains a shortcoming in industry. Although “big data” is the name of the game, providing a useful, meaningful and plausible approach to legacy database access is sorely missing.

What comes out on a regular basis is that there is no substitute for doing your homework. The pre-deployment work of understanding the functions of the organization prior to any development, agile or not, requires Standard Operating Procedures and data mapping. No level of “AGILE” will relieve you of having the facts before you begin. The most common issue we see is the “bring me a rock” syndrome, is no different in agile than it is in waterfall development. If you don’t know where you are when you start it is going to be very difficult to define the goal our outcome you require. Picking a platform and partner to get to modernization can only happen if you can actually tell them where you are and what the outcome looks like. In government, less than 10 percent of projects are considered a success, this is because everyone rushes to spend the money on technology but no one wants to do the homework and have the difficult conversation.