The State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds (SLFRF) program established by the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) continues to deliver critical financial support to communities across the country recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic. The SLFRF program is stimulating investments in strengthening the country’s internet infrastructure by funding upgrades—such as laying fiber backbone, completing last-mile connections, and prioritizing equitable access. These crucial investments provide residents with access to education, health care, government services, and economic opportunity. Since January 2023, communities increased their SLFRF budgets for broadband projects by 3 percent. As of March 31, 2023, SLFRF recipients budgeted over $7.7 billion in SLFRF funds for more than 950 broadband internet projects. SLFRF funds invested in broadband projects complement the American Rescue Plan’s investment in expanding affordable highspeed internet access through Treasury’s Capital Projects Fund (CPF). [More at the link below]

The recommendations in this report focus on the Federal Communications Commission's Community Equity and Diversity Council's mission of “advancing equity in the provision of access to digital communication services and products for all people of the United States, without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, location, sex or disability.

• The federal government should continue the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP).
• There should be greater outreach efforts to educate families about the benefits of the ACP. Those outreach efforts should include many more languages than English.
• Make it easier for families to enroll in the ACP.
• Broadband service providers can implement their own low-cost broadband service programs with quality service and comparable speeds as high-income households and provide broadband connectivity centers within communities.
• Non-profit organizations, and community anchor institutions (such as libraries) can develop Wi-Fi centers within local communities funded by the federal, state, local government and/or in partnership with industry.
• To identify and overcome the challenges to broadband adoption, affordability, and greater participation in digital literacy skills training programs, broadband service providers and federal and state governments must collaborate and leverage the trusted relationships that anchor institutions have with their local communities.
• To develop broadband adoption and digital literacy skills training on a national scale, the non-profit and private sectors need to develop best practices for more broader collaboration.
• The federal government must ensure states receive funds to develop their digital equity plans.

Senator Edward Markey (D-MA) and Representative Doris Matsui (D-CA) reintroduced their Algorithmic Justice and Online Platform Transparency Act. Specifically, the Algorithmic Justice and Online Platform Transparency Act would:

1. Prohibit algorithmic processes on online platforms that discriminate based on race, age, gender, ability and other protected characteristics;
2. Establish a safety and effectiveness standard for algorithms, such that online platforms may not employ automated processes which harm users or fail to ensure algorithms achieve their intended purposes;
3. Require online platforms to describe to users in plain language the types of algorithmic processes they employ and the information they collect to power them;
4. Require online platforms to maintain detailed records describing their algorithmic process for review by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), in compliance with key privacy and data de-identification standards;
5. Require online platforms to publish annual public reports detailing their content moderation practices; and,
6. Create an inter-agency task force comprised of entities including the FTC, Department of Education, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Department of Commerce, and Department of Justice to investigate the discriminatory algorithmic processes employed in sectors across the economy.

There are a few specific areas the Federal Communications Commission may focus on the potential and responsibility for AI in spectrum and communications networks generally:

• Spectrum access and interference mitigation. How will the ability of AI tools to enhance spectrum and access and mitigate potential interference be considered by the Office of Engineering Technology (OET) an the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau (WT) — particularly in light of the new policy statement? Additionally, although it is primarily the responsibility of the NTIA, how will these new tools impact the National Spectrum Strategy?

• Network reliability, competition and stability. How will we know where problems are? Whose responsibility is it to identify problems and correct them? Will this require the FCC to develop rules for cross-network cooperation and coordination?

• Privacy and other forms of consumer protection by design. All these tools require data for training and will be involved in ongoing monitoring and direction of people’s communications. A network must know precisely where to deliver a message, but it does not need to be able to report that information with specificity to those who do not need to know this data. A network can vastly improve efficient operation via AI tools, but the same tools can be used to prioritize traffic for business reasons rather than for reasons of network efficiency. It is not enough to prohibit certain sorts of bad behavior, we should do what we can to design the networks to make abuse as difficult as possible.

[Harold Feld is Senior Vice President at Public Knowledge.]