Challenge

The FCC Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS) enables the public to submit comments on FCC proceedings. It is an important tool for the FCC’s rulemaking process, allowing the public to have a voice in developing the rules that affect the nation’s telecommunications and broadcast infrastructure.

The previous version of ECFS had crashed more than once during periods of very high traffic, including when a late night TV host urged viewers to comment in large numbers. The system suffered from security vulnerabilities that could not be easily remediated due to a complex architecture that made it nearly impossible to perform updates to individual system components without rewriting the entire application. The FCC wanted to overhaul ECFS so that it would be “infinitely scalable” to meet future surges in demand, and assure the public and Congress of the security of data submitted and received.

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