The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has agreed to two recommendations submitted by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in relation to the former’s Middle Mile program.
In 2021, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act authorized NTIA to establish a $1 billion grant program for the middle mile, the portion of networks that connect the last mile (connection to homes or businesses) with the network backbone (transmission lines linking global internet networks).
GAO recently looked into whether NTIA established the Middle Mile program in accordance with recommended practices. In the end, the GAO report recommended NTIA establish quantifiable performance goals and a process for developing those goals and measures during program planning and design.
“While NTIA followed some leading practices for the program, it didn't set measurable goals with specific targets—which would allow NTIA to track the effectiveness of grant funding,” the GAO report said.
Federal regulations require agencies issuing a notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) to “include this information in the funding notice,” the report said. “GAO found NTIA had not developed such goals or measures prior to issuing its funding notice. By not doing so, NTIA missed the opportunity to inform applicants on how they could contribute to the goals during its applicant review and selection process.”
NTIA agreed with GAO’s recommendations in a response included in the final report.
However, the NTIA also noted that performance measures couldn’t be defined until after it reviewed applications, and then was able to tailor specific measures to awarded projects.
“As a competitive grant program in which applicants were permitted to propose a broad range of projects with various technologies in diverse geographic areas, performance measures could not be defined until the scope of projects proposed by applicants were identified through application review and slated for reward,” the NTIA stated.
Now that all middle mile projects have been awarded, the NTIA said it is “able to develop specific and quantified performance measures using baseline project data provided by each recipient. This positions NTIA to evaluate project progress and effectiveness and assess specific outcomes against the stated program goals and objectives.”
In response to the second GAO recommendation that the NTIA establish a specific process to accomplish performance management, the NTIA said that “in alignment with leading practices,” it develops performance goals and measures during program planning and design and “will continue to include them in its future NOFOs.”
Going forward, for similar grant programs in which performance measures cannot be defined “until the scope of proposed projects are identified through the application review process, NTIA will develop specific performance measures upon award in alignment with leading best practices,” the statement added.
GAO noted that earlier this year NTIA also “did not develop performance goals and measures during program planning and design as required” for two other programs, although it did not name them.
“By establishing performance measures with specified targets, NTIA can provide Congress with key information on program outcomes. Moreover, by establishing a process to ensure that goals and measures are developed during a program's planning stages NTIA can better target grant funding that links to desired outcomes,” the GAO report said.
The GAO has in the past urged federal agencies to harmonize their funding efforts with a national broadband strategy
That said, the GAO's latest report said the NTIA did sufficiently follow "all recommended grants management practices, and took steps to ensure program funding did not duplicate other federal funding."