David Mason: Ofcom’s role and responsibilities to ‘citizens’

[What follows is a guest post by David Mason]

Evidence-based intervention?

Ofcom has recently become involved in a spat with the BBC over regional news funding, according to The Guardian.  They report a senior Ofcom person as saying:

“This is an extraordinary development, for the BBC to say that our numbers are fantasy. It makes them look foolish, engaging in name calling, attacking Ofcom directly, at a key moment for the industry. I am furious. ..”

One of Ofcom’s guiding principles, according to their website:

(Ofcom’s Regulatory Principles, No.4) is that Ofcom will strive to ensure its interventions will be evidence-based, proportionate, consistent, accountable and transparent in both deliberation and outcome. A recent blog post recalled to mind a degree of skepticism over this objective and in November 2007 ‘Which?’ also published significant research which seems pertinent on the issue of Ofcom’s decision about junk food advertising and children’s TV.  In fact all-in-all it seems Ofcom’s decision was politically-driven, not evidence-driven.

Followers of this blog will recall that one of Ofcom’s primary duties is to further the interests of citizens in relation to communications matters. This duty was imposed by Parliament, against the express views of Lord Currie who regarded it as superfluous. Later the British Humanist Association were monitoring Ofcom’s annual plan and noticed a constant coupling of citizens and consumers. They wrote:

‘The point about the inclusion of reference to citizens in the Communications Act was that our interests as individual consumers can be very different from our interests as a community of citizens….’

In response Ofcom set up the Citizens Communication And Convergence Consultation.  However just after the consultation period ended in 2008 Ofcom’s lead person, who had been involved with it for over 2 years, moved to their Consumer Panel. It remains to be seen how the 25 submissions are to be analysed and incorporated into Ofcom’s decision-making processes.

More recently it’s reported that Ofcom has been caught up in European telecoms decision-making, specifically in the matter of the Telecoms Package, debated in the European Parliament in May 2009 and due to be revisited shortly. I’m told:

‘To the surprise of many, Ofcom was heavily involved in direct lobbying of Members of the European Parliament on the Telecoms package, across a range of issues. Ofcom took part and intervened in a number of Council discussions, normally reserved to governments. Ofcom was also allegedly present at most if not all internal governmental discussions in Westminster, not acting only in an advisory capacity ….’

Ed Richards has been invited to comment on these points, so far without success.

The question of Net Neutrality, for example, is admittedly a complex one, but in principle it ill behooves a regulator which conducted a consultation about its duties to citizens some months ago and has not yet formally digested the submissions received (many from eminent authorities), let alone incorporated the findings into its decision-making processes, to act in the manner reported.

With the European elections upon us, readers might like to ponder how their European Parliamentary representatives have conducted themselves on telecoms policy. Heartily recommended is IPtegrity – they have a special section or Europe-wide you can check here.