In the first year of the stimulus, it sometimes seemed that states and federal agencies were someplace between overburdened and overwhelmed. Federal agencies were challenged to oversee streams of money that rapidly turned to floods. Surely, at least some of the hard-working men and women implementing the stimulus must have thought their lives would eventually get easier, once they got the hang of this new effort.  

That may well be true for some of the programs, which are shifting from assessing applications and awarding funds to managing and overseeing grantees. But a recent GAO report on stimulus-funded broadband projects indicates that, for many of them, the work is just getting harder.

The first round of broadband grants, given out by the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS), totaled $2.2 billion via 150 grants. For those grants, as the GAO notes, these two agencies thoroughly reviewed and substantiated the financial, technical, and environmental information on applications, as well as the feasibility and reasonableness of them. That first round of grants began in July 2009 and ended in April 2010. (Read the full report for a wealth of information on the types of projects funded as well as further explanation of the review process.)

For the second round of grants, the two agencies have the dubious pleasure of awarding more than $4 billion more dollars by the Recovery Act’s September 30^th deadline. Even after subtracting out the $302 million that was cut from NTIA's broadband funding in order to pay for the $26 billion education jobs and Medicaid help for states that Congress and the White House recently enacted, the two agencies must still push out more than twice as much money in a lot less time. Although agency staff has gained invaluable experience reviewing these applications, the looming deadline may increase pressure on those staff to approve applications.

That challenge, the GAO explains, has pushed the agencies to streamline their review processes, eliminating or reducing certain steps and that’s good news. But it’s far from a solution.  The GAO report continues, “The agencies will need to oversee far more projects than in the past and these projects are likely to be much larger and more diverse than projects funded under the agencies’ prior broadband-related programs.” Although both agencies have put post-award oversight frameworks in place, according to the GAO, both may be at risk of having insufficient staff to adequately monitor these grants in the months after they are awarded.

Though some of these projects will not be complete until 2013, funding for oversight may run out as early at that September 30^th, 2010, deadline. That’s kind of alarming.