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Last week, I was in Minneapolis, Minnesota for a public hearing on the “Future of the Internet” sponsored by Free Press, Main Street Project, and the Center for Media Justice. Much already has been written about that event in the mainstream press, so I wanted to share with you the part of my day which has not been featured—my visits with Minnesota Public Radio and the South Minneapolis WorkForce Center. Both of these visits reinforced the ongoing work of the Commission to ensure that every American has access to affordable high-speed Internet service.

Minnesota Public Radio

Located in St. Paul, Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) has been at the forefront of serving its community, through local and regional news and music over FM radio, for many years. Several things struck me as I was touring MPR’s impressive studios, soundstage, newsroom, and the Fitzgerald Theatre (home of The Prairie Home Companion). First, by hosting regular public discussions on the issues of the day in the beautiful UBS Forum, the public has the opportunity to be engaged on important matters through interactive dialogue. Citizens can tune in and listen, but they also can actively participate in these sessions. Second, independent voices have the opportunity to be heard and to find an audience—and by this I mean those voices that happen to be accompanied by musical instruments. MPR offers bands whose music would never be featured on most commercial stations a platform for exposure on The Current. Third, by offering local and regional news and actively expanding its news staff, MPR can better serve the public with the information it needs.

The business of regulatory agencies can sometimes be a bit obscure.  There is a swath of legislation known as administrative law that governs how the Federal Communications Commission serves the public.  The same applies to sister agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, Food and Drug Administration , and Nuclear Regulatory Commission.  It is very important to all of us to make the FCC as open and transparent an agency as possible, but also to make the work that we do more understandable and accessible to everyone.  Whether blogging about upcoming litigation or sharing a screencast of how to file a formal consumer complaint, we’ll continue to scale out and revamp these efforts.   

Regulations.gov, EPA, and others recently held a contest asking citizens to submit videos explaining the federal rulemaking process and showing why it matters to you and me.  The winner was recently announced and we wanted to share it here at FCC.gov, too.  Enjoy! 

Unfortunately disasters happen.  Government agencies including the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the National Communications System (NCS) and the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the White House need to know the status of communications systems and services during and after a disaster. The FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau developed the voluntary Disaster Information Reporting System (DIRS) to collect this information during major disasters.
When a disaster strikes, the FCC asks wireline carriers, wireless carriers, broadcasters and CATV providers to provide information on the condition of their systems in the disaster area.  This includes information on switches, E 9-1-1 call centers, broadcast stations, and fiber-optic cable routes. The DIRS system organizes the information into tables, charts and maps that will accurately depict the status of communications in the disaster area. This information can be used to determine which communications service providers might need assistance with restoration efforts. Although the information provided by companies into DIRS is treated as confidential, DIRS has been set-up to provide aggregate information almost instantaneously to those Federal agencies with a need to know.

Recently, I visited an art exhibit in Washington, D.C. featuring the works of Haitian children.  If you live nearby or are coming to the capital for a visit, I encourage you to visit the exhibit. It’s called the “Healing Power of Art: Works of Art by Haitian Children After the Earthquake.” (The physical exhibit is at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African Art, but you can also view the pictures on-line.

The artwork is mostly colorful, though especially the early pieces have some dark hues, undoubtedly reflecting the feelings of loss, fright, and sadness that hundreds of thousands of young Haitian children have experienced. At the exhibit, I saw in the children’s pictures some of the same things I’d seen in Haiti in January – images of crooked buildings, collapsed houses, helicopters overhead, dangling wires, a U.S. Navy ship in the port -- and some signs of hope like yellow suns. 

The earthquake took a heavy toll on schoolchildren and all elements of education in Haiti.  The exhibit noted that, on January 12, 4,000 Haitian children died while in the classroom, many others died elsewhere, and 500 teachers were killed. The earthquake destroyed 90 percent of the school infrastructure and now 1.2 million children are out of school.