Staff economists are not guaranteed a seat at the FCC’s policy-making table. Increasingly during Commission proceedings, their views have become an afterthought, not an initial thought, according to Chairman Ajit Pai. He wants to change that.
Pai is laying the groundwork to create an Office of Economics and Data at the FCC. He told attendees at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday that having such an office will solve several problems: Economists are not systematically incorporated into the agency’s policy work and there’s no consistent use of their work. They work alone in separate bureaus, impeding their productivity.
Mark Jamison, a member of President Trump’s FCC transition team, suggested in December such an office would elevate the quality of the agency’s analytical work and attract more economists to the Commission, Inside Towers reported. Jamison is an economist, a visiting fellow with AEI’s Center for Internet, Communication and Technology and the director of the Public Utility Research Center at the University of Florida.
WIA and USTelecom praised the move. WIA President/CEO Jonathan Adelstein said: “We applaud Chairman Pai’s decision to prioritize economic analysis at the FCC. The wireless infrastructure industry is driven by data, and we believe that combining economic experts with other data professionals will lead to better rulemaking and policy decisions from the FCC.”
“Good policymaking rests on a foundation of sound economic analysis and it will help consumers by encouraging competition and market-driven results,” said USTelecom President/CEO Jonathan Spalter. “We commend Chairman Pai for making economic analysis a priority again at the agency.”
Pai envisions the OED as a place to combine economists with other data professionals at the Commission where they’d provide economic analysis to inform rulemakings, transactions and auctions. To start the project, the FCC is establishing a working group of economists who will ask big questions such as how should the new office be structured and who should be a part of it? The working group will seek input from agency personnel as well as stakeholders outside the Commission. Based on the findings, the group will establish an action plan by summer and then the full Commission would consider the plan. Pai would like to have the new office up and running by the end of the year.
Pai wants to give economists early input into the decision-making process and he’s begun to do that already, noting that one of his first hires was a Ph.D. economist. He’d like the economists to evaluate the paperwork requirements imposed by the Commission on the industries it regulates “to make sure we aren’t collecting information that’s duplicative or unnecessary,” said Pai. “Commissioner O’Rielly has called attention to the tremendous burden that these requirements place on the private sector, and this office will work to reduce them.”
Also on tap for the economists is long-range planning, answering questions like the impact of FCC policies on the Internet of Things, with billions of new devices dotting the landscape and operating at low power. The group will also need to determine the impact of the densification of wireless networks and higher demands for fiber backhaul on our long-range infrastructure rules.
April 6, 2017
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