Noting that visitors have found the FEC website to be disorganized and inaccessible, FEC Chairman Steven T. Walther is seeking the public's advice on how to improve the website and how best to use the Internet to communicate.

How many people typically serve on a PAC board? Where's the best place to post a job opening? Should you cancel your annual fly-in? Where can one find reliable information on doing business overseas? You may have asked some of these questions in your capacity as a public affairs professional. "Council Conversation" - a new website-based discussion forum - allows Council members to post questions and answers about any topic - from fundraising to grassroots activities to global affairs.

Congressional officials have amended new guidelines for those trying to terminate a lobbying registration - saying that lobbyists can deregister if they don't "reasonably expect" to make any future direct contacts.

The good news about the White House's revised lobbying rules is that they now restrict many others - not just lobbyists - from oral communications with federal officials about economic stimulus projects, Public Affairs Council President Doug Pinkham told members in a June 2 update.  Moreover, the rules now apply to a relatively narrow time frame. But the rules still require federal officials to document all meetings and phone calls about stimulus projects with registered lobbyists.

Are the costs of President Obama's new restrictions on lobbyists outweighing the benefits? That's the question the Washington Post poses in a recent editorial, which concludes that "too many qualified candidates have been denied positions for which they are suited simply because of a lobbyist taint."

Perhaps reluctant to endure the sort of criticism he received after hiring former lobbyists for executive branch jobs, President Obama in recent weeks has sought most of his administration appointees from academia, think tanks, non-profits and state government, Roll Call reports.

As some observers suspected would happen under new Obama administration rules aimed at lobbyists, companies and individuals during the first three months of 2009 stopped registering as official "lobbyists" in far greater numbers than they did during the last quarter of 2008.

Skeptics question how President Obama's new appointee to the Federal Election Commission will approach the often-controversial issues raised by campaign finance regulations. One campaign reform group, the Campaign Legal Center, objected that the nominee, labor attorney John Sullivan, has in the past called for lenient regulation.

Jugaad is a colloquial Hindi term for "creative improvisation," and it's a notion companies should consider embracing when doing business in India's complex democracy and economy, says a new study from the Foundation for Public Affairs.

This year is a good one to pay close attention to the Federal Election Commission. Not only have the six commissioners rendered some startling decisions and deadlocked on key issues, the terms of two Democrats and a Republican will expire this May. "There's no way to know yet whether another fresh set of commissioners will adjust course yet again," reports Campaigns & Elections' Politics Magazine.