[W3GV] FCC Universal Licensing System to be Down for Maintenance

[Ucdavid--- via W3GV]

FCC Universal Licensing System, Other Applications to be Down for  
Maintenance

FCC website maintenance in early September will make  the Universal
Licensing System (ULS), the Electronic Comment Filing System  (ECFS),
the Electronic Document Management System (EDOCS) and other  public
applications unavailable for more than 5 days. The Commission  said
the outage will begin at 2200 UTC on Wednesday, September 2,  and
continue through the Labor Day weekend. The maintenance work should
be  completed by 1200 UTC on Tuesday, September 8. During the ULS
outage, it will  not be possible to file any Amateur Radio
applications.

"[M]ost  Commission resources normally accessible through the
Commission's website,  including access to all electronic filing
systems and electronic dockets,  will be inaccessible for the same
period, with the exception of the Network  Outage Reporting System
(NORS), the Consumer Help Center (CHC), and the  Disaster Information
Reporting System (DIRS), which will remain available,"  an FCC Public
Notice said on August 20. "The Commission's website will  remain
available, but with reduced content and limited  search
capabilities." According to the Public Notice, the FCC will  follow
its normal schedule of operation during the maintenance period,  but
voicemail will be offline, and most Commission staffers will not
have  access to e-mail. Static content webpages on the fcc.gov
domain, such as the  FCC consumer guides, should remain available
during the outage.

The  FCC will extend filing deadlines for all regulatory and
enforcement filings  that fall during the maintenance period. Filings
due on September 2, 3, 4, or  8 now will be due on Wednesday,
September 9. "Except for the due dates  specified herein, we are not
automatically extending the deadlines for any  other comment or
filing periods that will be running during this time period,  but
requests for extension of time will be considered consistent with
the  Commission's normal practice," the FCC Public Notice said. "To
the extent the  due dates for filings to which reply or responsive
pleadings are allowed are  affected by this Public Notice, the due
dates for reply or responsive  pleadings shall be extended by the
same number of days."

In a blog,  "Modernizing the FCC's IT," FCC CIO David Bray said that
with the world and  the technology we use are changing rapidly, "the
information technology used  by the Federal Communications Commission
must change as well." Bray said the  FCC has "made significant
progress to upgrade and modernize our  infrastructure, and we
continue to work on modernizing the FCC's legacy IT  systems with the
resources we have available."

"We understand that  this temporary downtime before and during the
Labor Day Weekend may be  inconvenient for some FCC stakeholders,"
Bray  added.