The FCC site drives me nuts
The FCC may have one of the most poor websites of any major government organization:
- Press releases are available in exactly two formats: Word and "Acrobat" (Ed. note: isn’t that saying something is in Dreamweaver format instead of HTML, why not PDF?). Refer to point 3 for more of this Acrobat-centric craziness.
- The navigation was seemingly designed by someone who gets paid (base salary * frustration from public) instead of straight salary. A sidenote here, if this is the case, she/he must be freaking loaded.
- When I download files from recent approvals, the files always download as ‘retrieve.cgi’ because of lazy programming. I have to rename said file to something with a .pdf (hmm, .pdf no .acrobat?) extension to open it. This brings up the point: why can’t they serve HTML pages with JPEGs on them instead of PDF files with JPEGs imbedded?
- Photos taken of devices being approved are taken quite possibly by sub par camera phones. After hosting auctions selling billions of dollars worth of our air, you would think the FCC could splurge for a Nikon D70 and someone semi-trained how to use it. Maybe even a flash.
- If you want to search one of the many public FCC databases to find some solid facts, you are met with this page (and that’s after hunting around to find it, it just took me 5 minutes). I’ve never looked at this page and wanted to continue living. Here’s the kicker: There are graphics for each DB showing its "status"… I again refer to the billions of dollars the FCC got for our air and wonder why all online databases cannot all be online all the time. I mean, it’s the 21st century. Imagine going to Google and seeing a status graphic–Whoops! Too bad we’re down, try again next week!
- Want to see some new approvals? Well here’s the form. Good luck figuring that one out. How about a few links at the top for "View all recent approvals" and "Just looking for a certain type of device? View all recent DROP DOWN approvals." RSS even? Nah, that would be too efficient.
There is a lot more wrong with the FCC’s site, but you can get my point. It’s a mess.