Lujan, Thune Eye NTIA Infrastructure Money Rollout Plans as Oversight Hearing Focus

Two top Senate Communications Subcommittee members told us they intend to focus on NTIA’s rollout of $48 billion in connectivity money from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act during the subpanel’s upcoming NTIA oversight hearing. Senate Communications Chairman Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., and ranking member John Thune, R-S.D., indicated interest in talking about NTIA’s recent notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) for the $42.5 billion broadband equity, access and deployment (BEAD) program (see 2205130054).

NTIA Administrator Alan Davidson will testify at the hearing, which will begin at 10 a.m. June 9, as expected (see 2205270052), the Commerce Committee said Thursday. It will examine NTIA’s “implementation of” IIJA and the agency’s “role in federal spectrum management,” the panel said. Senate Commerce last week postponed (see 2205250063) a markup of the Improving Spectrum Coordination Act (S-1472), which would require the FCC and NTIA to update their spectrum memorandum of understanding.

“My goal is to have transparency” about NTIA administration of the $48 billion “and get questions answered … about how NTIA and the Department of Commerce plan to eliminate the digital divide in America, how they plan to deploy their technical expertise, how they’re going to work to get this done,” Lujan said in an interview. “I think this will be a strong bipartisan hearing” given the bipartisan support last year for IIJA (see 2108100062) and “we want to make sure that investment is going to people who need it most.” Administration of the broadband programs “can always be improved, we can always do better,” he said.

NTIA has done its “due diligence” on the BEAD NOFO “given the final direction to states should be expected going into the summer and states responding … coming into early fall and then seeing the deployment of” BEAD-funded broadband projects beginning before the end of the year, Lujan said. “I’ve been pushing NTIA for clear direction” and “more technical support.” One “of the questions I still have is how much of the staff who have been hired” specifically to administer BEAD “are actually in states versus not in states, providing technical support and expertise” on the ground, he said.

Thune wants to know how NTIA is “going to implement and spend all of this money” from IIJA “and what conditions and requirements they’re going to attach to that” funding. “I think there’ll be a lot of questions” about the NOFO, particularly from Republicans who are pushing NTIA to strictly follow IIJA’s text in formulating rules for distributing the BEAD money (see 2204260043), he told us: “This is going to be a good opportunity to push a little bit and find out from an implementation standpoint how they’re going to deploy” the money “and whether or not they’re going to make it really difficult to get dollars out there unless you comply with all the conditions” included in the NOFO.

Lawmakers are generally “on the same page on wanting to get” the IIJA money “out the door,” but “there are disagreements around the edges that I’d expect come up” during the Senate Communications hearing, including about the BEAD NOFO, said Information Technology and Innovation Foundation Broadband and Spectrum Policy Director Joe Kane. “I would expect” the NOFO language will probably be “among their top priorities” for discussion since the results of those rules will be “something that their constituents are going to experience very directly.” Davidson and other NTIA officials are “probably prepared to defend” the rules “based on the language already in there,” Kane said.

Senate Communications members should focus discussion about the NTIA IIJA money on “pressuring” the agency to “craft a program evaluation plan” it can use to measure recipients’ progress in deploying required broadband connectivity, said Technology Policy Institute Senior Fellow Sarah Oh Lam. A lot of attention is focused on the NOFO, which is “heavy on procedures for how to get the money out” to qualified applicants, but the rules are “very weak” on requiring standardized data metrics. “NTIA says they’re going to track” how the money’s spent, “but there’s nothing in the statute that requires reporting from the states,” Lam said: Absent standardized metrics, the agency will receive back a “patchwork” set of data from states.

Lawmakers should consider legislation to require NTIA to adopt standardized metrics for states to report on IIJA spending, Lam said: NTIA may not feel a need to “do much” on metrics without clear direction from Congress. “There are insufficiencies” with the IIJA text because “there’s a lot that was not said” about how to measure the efficacy of the connectivity spending, she said: “It’s not too burdensome” to seek such metrics since “everything in the digital economy” is already centered on “standardized analytics.” Lam also sees an opportunity for lawmakers to press for more specific language defining what constitutes “competitive methods” states must use to evaluate competing proposals from IIJA applicants. “If the goal really is deployment, that needs to be clarified” as taking priority over “secondary goals,” she said.

Lobbyists expect Senate Communications members to press Davidson on a new GAO report that recommended the White House develop a national broadband strategy, due to perceptions that existing programs aren’t effectively coordinated (see 2206010068). Senators will likely ask Davidson to provide more detail on how NTIA plans to meet GAO recommendations that the agency make recommendations to Congress on potential legislation on statutory barriers to aligning federal broadband programs, lobbyists said.