Our next goal in our redesigning the government series is to do the FCC website. Check it out. According to archive.org, the last time the site underwent a redesign was in August/September of 2001. The site is long overdue for an overhaul. When we started kicking around the idea of doing the FCC website, we talked to a few folks about it and we think that unlike any other mock redesign we’ve done, we’re going to open the process and have community help drive this.

Our usual process is to invent some kind of narrative theme for a redesign. With the FEC our goal was to demonstrate how the agency could build a web presence that used its data to shed light on the political process. With USA.gov it was thinking about personalization of government. With the Supreme Court it was about making data that is locked up inside the organization readable and presentable to all. So the first question is: how should we approach the FCC?

And yes, we know the current website is outdated– and Ali can make it look great, but in the end there’s more to it than that: what does www.fcc.gov need to do? Who does it need to serve? How should it serve them? Why?

Let us know, and we’ll keep you updated as we do our mock redesign. We’ll probably solicit comments for about a week before figuring out what our next steps are.