The FCC's web site should be designed to further the agency's regulatory mission and allow individuals and organizations to transact business more efficiently with the agency than they could in a paper or face-to-face world. Rather than focus on pretty graphics designed to maximize PR and image and present the Commission as hip and cutting-edge, the Commission should focus on improving the functionality of its electronic databases and database interfaces, the accessibility of information, and the amount of information. That's what loyal users really want, and the agency seems to have forgotten that. I can't help but think that the new site is like New Coke -- a flashy, ill-conceived idea that is quickly alienating the customer/user base. To fix these significant shortcomings, I suggest a few things. First, the Commission needs to revamp its outdated databases, such as EDOCS and COALS. There's a lot of information that is not easily accessible or omitted altogether from these databases. It need not be. Second, the Commission needs to identify tasks that it is still handling manually (St. Louis filing facility, anyone?). There is no excuse for the Wireline Competition Bureau not having an electronic filing and payment option for domestic 214 transfers and assignments. Third, the Commission needs to reduce the number of clicks to reach specific content, as in many cases, it takes 10 clicks to get to through the sub-sub-sub-sub menus to find content. Finally, the Commission needs to require that different bureaus and offices (a) keep their content up-to-date (the same goes for the FCC's rules, which are often out of date on the Commission's web site), (b) improve transparency by disclosing organizational structure and staff names associated with particular tasks, and (c) adding content about regulatory policies and practices. Thanks for considering these thoughts.

I think you need to rethink making these radical changes that are so disruptive to the user, and focus on modifications that truly improve things, rather than changes that actually make things more onerous. For example, it used to be that when we clicked on a link to an item such as a press release or a commissioner statement, we were taken to the item. Now when we click on links to items, we're treated to a bunch of FCC boilerplate and forced to then hit the "expand" button. Why? May not seem like a big deal, but multiply this times tens and hundreds and maybe even thousands of times on an individual basis over a long period, or by millions and millions for all your users in aggregate over some period of time (billions and billions may be overstating things for now), and you have a colossal waste of time, and annoying at that. Also, your news Headlines are now much less user-friendly. You only have a few on your opening page, much less than before, and even when we hit link to expand, we don't get that many, whereas before when we expanded, we got the whole year's worth of headlines. And then if we want to look for more, you just have further bite-size amounts and with no sense of time frame. Yes, we can go through the trouble of specifying time range, but it was SO much easier the way it was before, where we (1) had more headlines on opening page, (2) had one-click access to all that year's headlines, and (3) had another one-click link to any particular year of headlines. Rather than this increasingly granular segmented search requirement that simply is more onerous and less efficient.