On May 11, 2022, all four federal agencies responsible for distributing hundreds of billions in broadband infrastructure subsidies announced that they had agreed "to share information about and collaborate regarding the collection and reporting of certain data and metrics relating to broadband deployment."
Pursuant to their Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), and consistent with arguments I made in a recent Perspectives from FSF Scholars, the FCC, NTIA, Department of Agriculture, and Department of Treasury will work together to leverage the FCC's soon-to-be-released broadband service availability maps (among other resources) to disseminate and display publicly "information about projects that have received or will receive funding from" the various programs that they administer.
As I explained in "Overlapping Broadband Appropriations Demand Agency Coordination: New FCC Maps Can Track Grants, Avert Waste," a March 2022 Perspectives, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 directed NTIA, the FCC, and Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service to "share information with each other about existing or planned projects that have received or will receive funds under the programs" for which those three agencies are responsible. That statutory requirement led to the release of an interagency agreement on June 25, 2021.
Notably, however, Treasury, which was tasked by the American Recovery Plan Act to oversee the $350 billion State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds as well as the $10 billion Coronavirus Capital Projects Fund, was not a party to that agreement.
The MOU released on May 12, 2022, which supplements rather than supplants the prior three-party agreement, addresses that concern by bringing Treasury into the fold.
Given the vast amount of money at stake in these overlapping programs designed to connect those Americans still unserved, effective coordination is essential to avoid redundant grants, overbuilds, and waste, fraud, and abuse. The transparency and enhanced oversight made possible by this latest interagency pact hopefully will ensure that such coordination indeed does take place.
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