credit: iStockphoto/OleGunnarUA
The tech guys at the FCC won’t be out boating this Labor Day weekend. Starting Wednesday Sept. 2, the FCC began the process of modernizing its legacy IT systems, and as a result a number of the Web portals used to search, file and apply for licensing are or will be unavailable.
Those applications include the Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS), Electronic Document Management System (EDOCS), Universal Licensing System (ULS) and National Broadband Map.
Your email inbox may seem a tad lighter this week, too. As a result of the IT work, the FCC will not deliver its FCC Daily Digest today or Friday. Distribution of the Daily Digest will resume when the systems are available again, the commission said.
The goal is to have the Web applications upgraded and available by 8 a.m. by Tuesday, Sept. 8.
One potential upside to this downtime is that filing deadlines for most commission proceedings during the affected time period will be extended. With a few exceptions, filings that would have been due on Sept. 2, 3, 4 or 8 will now be due next Wednesday, Sept. 9. Details about the extension and a list of filings that aren’t exempt can be found here.
Though certain sites will be down, most content pages under the main www.fcc.gov domain should be up and running during this period, including the FCC Consumer Help Desk. The help desk site was recently upgraded to be Software as a Service (SaaS) option, said David Bray, FCC CIO, in a recent blog post.
“It is our goal to modernize more of the FCC’s legacy IT to SaaS and other cloud-based platform options going forward,” he said. “This modernization is more flexible, secure and resilient, as well as more cost effective compared to the costs of maintaining on-premise IT solutions.”
This Labor Day weekend upgrade is another piece of the commission’s effort to reduce how much the agency spends on legacy infrastructure, and improve public engagement with the commission, Bray said.
Text has been updated to correct the first name of David Bray.
