Report on the Effectiveness of the Broadband Interagency Coordination Agreement

The Federal Communications Commission, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) (collectively, the Agencies) entered into an interagency agreement to share information and coordinate for the distribution of funds for broadband deployment. The FCC’s experience with the Interagency Agreement, as well as the record, demonstrate that the Interagency Agreement has significantly facilitated efficient use of federal funds for broadband deployment. The Interagency Agreement has helped the Agencies strengthen and improve existing coordination workstreams and establish new coordination workstreams. Based on the record, the FCC makes the following recommendations for the Interagency Agreement:

• The Agencies should continue to work to identify and implement standardization in broadband data, as appropriate. This includes, for example, its efforts to publish maps based on the Broadband Data Collection (BDC) work and promotion thereof as a reliable and useful source of broadband deployment data among federal agencies.
• Additionally, beyond continuing its work on the BDC, the Agencies, along with all of the federal funding agencies, should look for opportunities to increase visibility into coordination efforts between the Agencies, except to the extent doing so would undermine the effectiveness of coordination efforts.
• The agencies should consider revising the Interagency Agreement and the memorandum of understanding (MOU) to establish a consistent deduplication review process that includes a minimum period of time for agenciesto review proposed funding before the funding agency makes final commitments. This minimum should be honored unless extraordinary considerations warrant a shorter period.
• Broadband funding agencies should explore how best to complement existing funding mapping efforts with data from state and local entities on their broadband funding programs.
• The Agencies should establish an expedited process to add other agencies to the MOU, to ensure a quick pathway to coordinate the efforts of other agencies that administer funding programs and develop related policy goals.