When Julius Genachowski took over as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission in late June, one of his first official actions was to appoint FCC veteran Mary Beth Richards to oversee an ambitious overhaul of the agency.

This week Richards talked about her goals and plans for accomplishing that task in an interview with Dow Jones News Service. We liked what she said.

Richards said she is examining the FCC's rules dictating how lobbyists and consumers communicate with the agency, specifically the agency’s “ex-parte” rules. In theory, those rules are supposed to make sure the public is kept informed on interactions between FCC officials and the private sector. In practice, however, they rarely offer much more information other than who met with who and a very, very general description of what was discussed.

Such closed-door meetings among regulators and the people who they are supposed to regulate should always make the public nervous. This is particularly true when people at the agency have regularly spun through the revolving door to the private sector they regulated, and vice versa – which has been common practice at the FCC since time immemorial.

At a minimum, the FCC should rewrite its ex parte rules to require a much more complete record of what was said by whom, with separate versions provided by both the telecom industry representatives and the agency officials involved. As Justice Louis Brandeis famously remarked, “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.”

Richards also said data the FCC collects from broadcasting, telephone and Internet companies should be posted on the FCC Web site in a searchable format. We think such an effort could prove invaluable for consumers, particularly if the proper efforts are made to make the information as consumer-friendly as possible.

Genachowski has already said he wants as much information as possible to be publicly available, but he has also said he believes the FCC has to respect the confidentiality of some company numbers. That may be true, but the agency should consistently err on the side of disclosure and should require strong and clear arguments from companies wanting to keep their information filed with the FCC out of public view.

Richards is already looking to FCC employees for ideas about changing the agency, recently establishing a using an internal Web site – reboot.fcc.gov – to collect comments. She said a similar site eventually will be available to the public. We urge her to move expeditiously make that promise a reality.

Richards has also begun work on a summary of all the data the FCC now collects and stores, something Genachowski has established as a top priority.

We applaud such an effort, and look forward to seeing the data summary made available to the public, preferably online.