So How's The ARRA Doing At 6 Months?

[Commentary] As we approach the 6-month mark on the signing of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), it seems like a good time to check in on the National Broadband Plan, the National Broadband Map, and Broadband stimulus package. While 6 months may seem an impossibly long time for folks who don't see how much work it takes to make this stuff happen, we are still fairly early in the game and the folks at NTIA and FCC are still trying to invent a process to create a National Broadband Plan, a Broadband Map, and a process for handing out a lot of money to projects trying to achieve multiple objectives. That makes the willingness to stay engaged with people, take the criticism as constructive, and actually try to learn from it, extremely important and encouraging qualities. As in all policy, every party with an interest will present its views — and the FCC and NTIA will struggle to sort them out. Hopefully, as they work the bugs out of the system, it will continue to improve, even if we do lose on some issues we care deeply about.