Due to some prodding by the Consumer Panel, Ofcom has decided to have a rethink about how (or rather when) it publishes the responses it receives to consultations.

As it stands when Ofcom receives responses to a consultation the regulator only publishes them alongside its own decision.

Those of you who are avid Ofcomwatch watchers will remember us writing to Ofcom in November 2003 to suggest that this was a crap way of doing things.

We advocated a system similar to that used by the FCC, where responses were publicly available on receipt, allowing interested parties to respond to the positions and suggestions proposed by others before Ofcom had closed the door and made its final decision.

We thought that opening up the process would make things more transparent and allow watchers to get a sense of the tone of responses early on in the consultation process - chiming in if they felt things were likely to veer off in a particular direction.

Access on reciept would also makes the process of looking through responses less arduous. At the moment on publication of a decision interested parties are faced with a mountain of reading in one large lump � its tempting not to bother when faced with a hundred or so documents � leading to a lower level of accountability.

Ofcom claimed, in a letter to us back in November, that making responses public before publishing the final decision would encourage stakeholders to post at the last minute. I suspect that in reality there are plenty of folks posting at the last minute regardless of whether the responses are open or not.

In addition, Ofcom also said that they didn�t want �tit for tat� responses � which is fair enough � but isn�t this what debate - in essence - is all about? One man’s ‘tit for tat’ might be another man’s dialogue.

Anyway, it sounds like all of this is about to change and that the public will be able to see responses on the Ofcom website as and when they are received. This would be a significant win for the Consumer Panel � who have so far been invisible.

The panel is in a tight spot in this regard. Consulted by Ofcom during the development of proposals the panel is left little scope to disagree or make suggestions publicly after the fact. This leaves the Comsumer Panel open to the charge that it doesn�t do anything � which if the change to the consultation process is approved obviously isn’t true.