While sharing is the wave of the future,...

While sharing is the wave of the future, it might help if some government agency were responsible for all government spectrum, similar to how the General Services Administration manages real estate, said Blair Levin, manager of the FCC’s National Broadband Plan. “Based on what I experienced in government, I think GSA, or OMB [the Office of Management and Budget] for that matter, does a better job forcing a certain kind of efficiency within an agency, than the agency can do for itself,” Levin said Friday. “If the knowledge and incentives lie only in the silo, the prime imperative will be to protect the silo. If authority resides in a broader group, the incentives, and the use of the knowledge changes; I hope Congress explores that.” Levin also took on what he sees as a too-common mantra in Washington, that the government shouldn’t pick winners and losers. “This is also ironic as the city’s major industry, lobbying, is premised on the need to affect the picking of winners and losers,” he said at a Washington conference sponsored by Clemson and George Mason University. But Levin said policy does affect investment. “I subscribe to a different point of view, one offered me by a great investor,” he said. “He told me, ‘D.C. flatters itself to think it can pick; there are too many factors to guarantee one result or the other. But policy is like gravity; it does affect where capital flows.’ So my question is where does D.C. want money to flow in telecommunications where it is not flowing now? Do we think the market is underinvesting in wireless networks? Wired networks? Devices?” Levin, currently at the Aspen Institute, is also a former analyst and FCC chief of staff.