The Federal Communications Commission will transition to its new Electronic Comment Filing System (“ECFS”) system on the morning of Monday, June 20, 2016. This will be a “hard launch,” meaning that the legacy system will no longer be available after the transition. All documents in the legacy system will be accessible in the new system, and saved links (bookmarks or favorites) to documents and proceedings should not need to be adjusted. This modernization project is expected to significantly improve the resiliency and performance of ECFS.
The Commission will continue to take feedback and improve the system leading up to and following this transition. As part of this process, the Commission has scheduled a number of public, web-based tutorials to provide multiple opportunities for users to become comfortable with the new system. All demos will be listed here: https://www.fcc.gov/news-events/events. As of this date, tutorials have been scheduled for June 7, 9, 14, and 16.
In order to best ensure that this important public-engagement system is fully functional during regular business hours, the Commission will take down the legacy ECFS application starting at 11:59 p.m. ET on Friday, June 17, 2016, and the system will be unavailable through the weekend. The Commission plans for the new system to be available and fully operational by 8 a.m. ET on Monday, June 20, 2016. The old ECFS system will not be available once the new one is operational, but all files will be accessible in the new system. Should any unforeseen delays take place, the Commission will release a Public Notice on the front page of its website, FCC.gov, informing users of any impacts.
Given that ECFS is expected to be fully operational during all FCC business hours, the agency does not plan any changes to any deadlines.