GAO Flags Gaps in Federal Broadband Coordination and Data Accuracy
Three years after GAO recommendations, federal broadband coordination remains fragmented.
WASHINGTON, May 1, 2025 – Federal agencies haven’t been doing the homework the Government Accountability Office assigned back in 2022.
That’s the central message of a new GAO report released Monday, which finds three years after the GAO told federal agencies how to coordinate 133 federal broadband programs administered by 15 agencies – most of the work remains undone.
The 72-page audit, led by GAO’s Andrew Von Ah, was requested by congressional oversight committees to evaluate ongoing broadband coordination challenges.
It found the four primary agencies tasked with coordinating the federal government’s sprawling broadband deployment efforts— the Federal Communications Commission, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the Agriculture Department, and Treasury — continue to fall short in coordinating their efforts, especially surrounding the sharing of broadband availability data.
The agencies have only fully implemented two of eight leading practices recommended in GAO’s 2022 report, which called for a national strategy to coordinate "fragmented, overlapping federal programs."
“FCC, NTIA, USDA, and Treasury have made progress in bridging organizational cultures,” the report states, “but have not fully established compatible policies and procedures.”
One of GAO’s biggest concerns centered on the National Broadband Map, maintained by the FCC, which all four of the agencies rely upon to guide federal broadband funding decisions.
“FCC has not formally assessed the effectiveness of these efforts,” GAO reports. “Without evaluating the effectiveness of its validations, verifications, audits, and referrals processes, FCC cannot know the extent to which these processes are sufficient to ensure the accuracy of the data in the National Broadband Map. This, in turn, increases the risk that shortcomings of these processes, if any, may linger.”
The GAO also highlighted a lack of clarity among agencies over what counts as “covered data” – meant to guide data-sharing on federally funded projects. When asked to define the term, agency officials gave differing responses.
Likewise, GAO found no agreed-upon timeline for agencies to submit project data to the FCC’s broadband map. While NTIA updates the map monthly and USDA does so quarterly, GAO found that one agency waits until projects are well into construction before submitting any data. Treasury’s reporting varies quarterly and annually.
The GAO found that FCC, NTIA, and USDA have not established a formal process to prevent duplicate funding. NTIA has circulated a five-step framework for de-duplication, but it has not been formally adopted by its peer agencies.
State broadband offices, increasingly responsible for deploying funds under programs like the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program, were surveyed on their perspectives about federal agencies’ coordination, as well as their satisfaction with agencies’ expertise and timeliness.
Most state offices characterized NTIA’s and Treasury’s coordination efforts as “effective” or “very effective.” FCC and USDA received lower marks, with most states mostly calling their engagement “somewhat effective.”
