Washington, DC - Oct 14, 2009 - Since 1998, the Federal Communication Commission's Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS) has provided consumer access to the rulemaking process. The FCC has upgraded and enhanced the ECFS and will present the changes at a public forum at FCC headquarters on Oct. 23, from 9:30 a.m. to 11 a.m. The presentation will be held in the Commission Meeting Room.

The ECFS was originally launched in October 1998 to allow electronic submission and query of rulemakings before the Commission. The system tracks all open proceedings and contains all formal rulemaking items and comments from 1992 to the present.

With the 2.0 upgrade, the ECFS adds many new features, including Section 508 compliance; the ability for users to file multiple documents to multiple rulemakings in a single submission; advanced search and query of rulemakings; ability to extract comments; RSS feeds; and the ability to export data results to Excel or PDF formats.

The planned public presentation on Oct. 23 will provide information about the upgraded system and to give citizens an opportunity to discuss the future uses and capabilities of the FCC's comment filing system. The presentation will be conducted by Bill Cline, chief of the Reference Information Center.