By Mark Ansboury, CTO OneCommunity

I just returned to the hotel from the NTIA meeting, which was standing-room-only.

Not only were more than 1,000 people in attendance, but many were turned away because the room had reached capacity.  The room was buzzing with anticipation that increased dramatically when the floor was opened to questions.  Attendees lined up to ask question not only on the conference floor but through email and teleconference.  Many focused on the how broadband would affect their community and grant eligibility but having partnered with the FCC in a pilot project connecting rural hospitals OneCommunity and The Knight Center of Digital Excellence were interested in how the actual process of grant administration was going to work for the communities that we are currently working on proposing “shovel ready” projects.

Below is a transcript of my question to and the subsequent answer from the NTIA panel:

(Mark Ansboury)

My name is Mark Ansboury and I represent a nonprofit, OneCommunity who is a broadband service provider in Ohio and also the Knight Center of Digital Excellence, which is the best practice for implementation and adoption of broadband services.  We were lucky enough to receive one of the FCC rural health care pilot grants here a little over a year ago, and we’re very pleased, and thank you FCC for helping make that all happen. But one of the things is we’re working with a number of communities in helping them to find, and as Dr. Bernadette McGuire-Rivera said get the proposals ready now, but the issue really seems to follow in towards NTIA Meeting for American Recovery Reinvestment Act 2009 Presentation Overviewthe administrative process.  Once the awards occur, are we going to expect the same kind of sort of time and burdens and complexity in administering and using the funds or are you expecting to really streamline that process so the funds can be deployed quickly?

(Dr. McGuire-Rivera)

We will streamline it, but you still have to be very accountable, and I think in order to get the money out fast, we’ll be very careful in managing it and having quart reportings, but I don’t see anything other than — you might want to look at our program and things we have done before.  I think it actually is pretty streamlined.  But we understand what you’re going through in trying to get the money spent and get it spent properly.  Again, we’ll work with you to get something that works for both of us.

(Moderator)

I would also follow on with saying because we’re trying to do this test bed program, because we’re trying to do things that will be scalable and usable in the future, I think we’re going to look very closely, and we’re going to — we want to make sure when we give out the public’s money that we give it out in a wise way.  So I would add that to those comments.  One question is can sole proprietorships be eligible for the RUS broadband grant program?

(Mr. Villano)

It’s a good comment.  We’ll be seeking comments on that.  Right now they would not be, and there’s nothing in the statute that would preclude it.  So we’ll certainly look at that during the comment period.

For more information please download the Knight Center of Digital Excellence Notes from the 3.10.09 NTIA and RUS Meeting