Washington Post columnist Ed O’Keefe published an article today about the Department of Interior’s implementation of the White House’s scientific integrity policy which has been a recurring theme here.

This policy states

The public must be able to trust the science and scientific process informing public policy decisions. Political officials should not suppress or alter scientific or technological findings and conclusions. If scientific and technological information is developed and used by the Federal Government, it should ordinarily be made available to the public. To the extent permitted by law, there should be transparency in the preparation, identification, and use of scientific and technological information in policymaking. The selection of scientists and technology professionals for positions in the executive branch should be based on their scientific and technological knowledge, credentials, experience, and integrity.

Now, a lot of the FCC’s jurisdiction is nontechnical - think of the famous ‘wardrobe failure” - and even some of the technical jurisdiction in spectrum management involves trades between costs of new service with respect to technical impact on existing spectrum users and benefits of the new service. But in spectrum policy I am reminded of what a distinguished telecom lawyer once told me, “Some questions actually have (objective) answers”.

For example, as FCC and NTIA tool up for a battle over LightSquared’s ATC application, it will be very tempting for opponents of it to just say that it will cause GPS interference inevitably. Now a poorly designed MSS/ATC system in the band adjacent to the GPS L1 signal will clearly cause interference just as a poorly designed TDD AWS-3 system next an FDD AWS-2 system will cause interference. But the key policy issue is whether clever engineers can come up with a set of design details to reduce this interference to an acceptable level comparable to naturally occurring outages. This should be considered in the context of the above quote from the White House, not in smoke filled rooms without the potential for objective review of the analysis - unless it is necessary to keep certain details of the public record to protect properly classified information. But even in that case, FCC or NTIA could ask for an independent review by a contractor with clearances or could set up a technical advisory committee with cleared members similar to the Defense Science Board.

There is anecdotal evidence within FCC that the famous FleetCall waiver that allowed the creation of NEXTEL and the resulting 800 MHz interference to public safety was identified by the technical staff of WTB’s predecessor as having an interference risk and that the staff urged an explicit condition on the waiver. We now know what happened when the waiver was granted without this condition. Had a scientific integrity policy been in place at that time, the resulting public safety interference could have been resolved quickly.

So why don’t FCC and NTIA emulate the progressive move by Interior in implementing the President’s scientific integrity policy!

[Your blogger has no financial interest or relationship with LightSquared]