Month: May 2006

Public Service Recognition Week

To celebrate Public Service Recognition Week (should’ve been a month), I watched Ikiru. In this film, Kanji Watanabe, an aging bureaucrat, notes three rules for bureaucratic success:

  1. Always be on time.
  2. Never take any vacation.
  3. Do no work.

He also poignantly sings

Life is brief
Fall in love, maidens
Before the crimson bloom
Fades from your lips
Before the tides of passion
Cool within you
…

With less than a year to live, Watanabe takes a vacation and works passionately and successfully to transform a mosquito-infested cesspool into a children’s playground.

Kanji Watanabe died a hero in public service. He received full bureaucratic honors in his funeral. May the memory of Kanji Watanabe live on in the public service of bureaucrats around the world!

rights to communicate using radio spectrum

An important trend in communications policy has been to give persons more freedom to communicate using radio devices. The U.K. Office of Communication (Ofcom) currently is consulting on new ways of defining licenses for communicating using radio spectrum. Ofcom proposes to specify in licenses spectrum usage rights. It proposes to define these rights by specifying geographic boundaries and about thirteen parameters relating to power flux density, including parameters relating to time and location density. Of course, many other parameters will be relevant to modeling and measuring these rights. Compared to the structure of parameters embedded in specific technologies and applications, this new structure of license parameters gives licensees more freedom to communicate using different radio technologies and for different purposes.

Adjudication of spectrum usage rights through an institution separate from the spectrum regulatory body would make spectrum usage rights less uncertain and more secure. The authoritative meaning of spectrum usage rights may not be clear. If the spectrum regulatory body adjudicates the spectrum rights that it issues, it can further specify or revise the rights it grants through the adjudicatory process. If an independent body adjudicates the rights, then the spectrum regulatory body cannot do this. Independent adjudication disciplines the public specification of spectrum usage rights. Similarly, the spectrum regulatory body might prefer at some future time to revise spectrum usage rights granted earlier. Having an independent institution adjudicate spectrum usage rights makes those rights more secure under subsequent changes in spectrum policy.