Case Study: Federal Communications Commission achieves 60,000+ public responses for the National Broadband Plan with IdeaScale

Lowering the Barriers to Participation

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the U.S. independent agency responsible for communications policy, needed to broaden public participation in its National Broadband Plan. Although an electronic comment window existed, finding and filing comments was still difficult for many citizens; the FCC’s challenge was to lower barriers so anyone — tech-savvy or not — could engage meaningfully in the rule-making process.

Working with IdeaScale, the FCC launched broadband.ideascale.com, a crowdsourcing platform organized around 17 plan topics. The site generated over 60,000 public responses, revealed which issues mattered most, produced the highest number of Public Notices ever, and provided organized, public-record feedback that was incorporated into the final Broadband Plan. The success improved public dialogue and led to ongoing collaboration on other initiatives like Net Neutrality.

Federal Communications Commission

Haley Vandyck

Director of Citizen Engagement