Federal agencies are quickly working to make it cheaper and faster for private companies to build broadband services along government property in every part of the United States under orders from President Obama.
Obama’s June 13 executive order directed agencies that are landlords managing federal properties and highways to streamline the application process and make it easier to lay down broadband wiring on or near federal property in the next six months to a year. That includes buildings and large tracts of government land such as the national parks.
The Department of Transportation has estimated the government could save 90% in broadband costs with a “dig once” policy – adding broadband to a federal construction site as it is being dug and built instead of digging it up again to add broadband.
The idea is to “have a process that is predictable in which decisions are made in a timely way, that there is transparency and greater uniformity across the federal government,” said Tom Kalil, Deputy Director for Policy for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).
Kalil told Breaking Gov the executive order streamlines the process and makes it more user-friendly across every department.
The order will have a broad impact on agencies that manage federal property, including the Department of Interior that runs the National Park Service, the Agriculture Department, in charge of the U.S. Forest Service, the Transportation Department that manages federal roadways across the country and the General Services Administration responsible for more than 10,000 government buildings.
“Many of these properties can provide excellent pathways for deployment of broadband infrastructure, but broadband providers today face challenges in working with the relevant controlling Federal agencies, many of which have their own processes for granting access to their assets,” the White House said in a statement.
OSTP is working with GSA to develop a standard template that can be used by every agency to streamline applications instead of the patchwork of request forms now scattered across government. A standardized streamlined process will speed up the plans and put them into action much sooner, broadband experts say.
The executive order is an important piece of extending the National Broadband Plan put in force two years ago by the Obama administration, according to Drew Clark, Chairman of the Broadband Breakfast Club and BroadbandCensus.com.
“It directs federal agencies to make use of government facilities and land and make them more accessible and useable for broadband,” Clark told Breaking Gov.
The “Dig Once” policy has already been implemented in several states, including Illinois where broadband is built alongside state highway construction projects, Clark said.
Having access to broadband technology and other digital tools is a key ingredient to economic, social and political connectedness. Yet only 69% of Americans have broadband internet connections at home, he said.
“The executive order is a solid way to implement a policy that smartly uses federal assets in pursuit of better broadband,” Clark added.
The policy implements a “broadband conduit”-plastic pipes, which house fiber-optic communications cable-during the construction of federal highways. The Federal Highway Administration estimates it is ten times more expensive to dig up and then repair an existing road to lay fiber, than to dig a channel for it when the road is being built or repaired.
“Broadband networks are critical to our country’s economic success by facilitating job creation, new business growth, and connectivity to important Internet services, such as online classrooms, health IT, and smart grid technology,” said Rep. Rep. Anna G. Eshoo, D-Calif.
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, agreed that the executive order will keep the federal government moving toward delivering broadband to greater numbers of Internet-savvy customers.
“Broadband deployment is the key to growing our nation’s economy, creating jobs and expanding the overall well-being of our citizens,” Waxman said. “Efficient use of federal lands and facilities along with prudent planning of new infrastructure projects will promote the expansion of broadband with significant cost savings to the American taxpayer.”
The second part of the administration’s plan to speed up broadband availability is the creation of US Ignite Partnership, which partners different federal agencies with private sector companies, private universities and municipalities to spur the development of 60 “advanced, next-generation applications capable of operating on gigabit broadband networks over the next five years.”
The President’s Executive Order and the US Ignite partnership are a two-pronged approach to help speed the delivery of connectivity to communities, businesses, and schools across the country.
“By connecting every corner of our country to the digital age,” Obama said, “we can help our businesses become more competitive, our students become more informed, and our citizens become more engaged.”