Identifying Documents Filed in Multiple Dockets
ECFS 2.0 added the great improvement of being able to submit a document to multiple proceedings in one step - a boon to all filers. However, on the other side, it would be hugely useful to those of us who monitor proceedings for ECFS to identify what other dockets a particular document was filed in. This would allow the public to comprehensively review multiple dockets while reducing the amount of repeated downloading.
It seems the ideal way to do this would be to simply having a single id for each filed document, thus having a single url (http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=XXX) that would appear in multiple dockets. This would have the distinct advantage of allowing browsers to recognize and mark already-visited document links, making it easy for the public to identify already-read documents.
However, I believe that in the existing system, when the same document is filed in multiple dockets, multiple independent document ids (and thus URLs) are created, much as if the filer had separately filed the document in each docket like in ECFS 1.0. Since this is the case, rather than re-work the entire DB schema, it might be easier to keep a record of the actual submission itself (you may already do this, as there is a confirmation number for electronic filings) and use that information to display in ECFS "Search for Filing" results all dockets to which a particular document was submitted. This would have the downside of requiring additional fields to be displayed on the results page, and would not enable the "already visited link" functionality mentioned above, but it would still be helpful to those of us who spend time monitoring dockets.
