The Transmission Project’s Digital Arts Service Corps was mentioned in a recent news item on the Knight Commission’s blog:

…young people have a special role to play in times of great change and should be engaged in developing the digital information and communication capacities of local communities (recommendation #12). The Commission referred to the potential for creating a domestic version of the Geeks Corps, an international nonprofit that works to expand access to the Internet around the world. There are several examples of such projects happening in the United States already, including the Digital Arts Service Corps and the Public Media Corps in development by the National Black Programming Consortium (NBPC).

The Transmission Project believes that all people have a role in the creation of a robust and diverse media ecology. The Digital Arts Service Corps engages people of all ages, backgrounds and walks of life in building the capacity of nonprofit organizations the use media and technology to strengthen communities. Our Corps members have aged from 17 to 70 and each one brought unique skills, perspectives and experience to their service. Youth is but one barrier to inclusion in the planning and construction of a digital society.

At the end of January, the NTIA notified more than 1300 applicants that their projects would not be funded. This still left more than 500 project applications still pending for funding. At the time, only $250M for 31 projects had been announced; as more information about Round 2 has become available, we now know that Round 1 will total $1.4 billion in grants to be announced by the end of February (this week!).

In order to learn more about the process and inform Round 2 applicants—there is a scant 2 weeks between Round 1’s anticipated announcements and the closing of the Round 2 application period—we sent a brief survey to project applicants who had their project declined for funding and those whose application was still pending. Of the 800 unique applicants in our survey pool, we received 217 responses between February 10 and February 18, 2010.

In this post, I’ll be sharing information about the project feedback process: public response notices, due diligence, and letters of non-funding.

This analysis is done in collaboration with the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Initiative.

Public Notice Responses

For 30 days beginning in late September, 2009 the NTIA allowed public comments on the nearly 1900 BTOP project applications. According to record, 47% of projects received at least 1 public response.

Interestingly, not a single Public Computing Center or Sustainable Broadband Adoption proposal (39% of all applications) received a Public Response Notice. Only network deployment projects (Last Mile and Middle Mile) received comments.

From our surveys, these notices were overwhelmingly filed by existing network providers and of a critical nature. Of survey particants who received a Public Response Notice, 90% of those notices came from current network operators. The nature of their comments was similar, some respondents characterizing them as “canned filings” and “Standard Generic Comments”: 3/4ths of survey responders’ comments claimed the proposed areas were not underserved or not rural. The shotgun nature of these notices can be witnessed by one public response notice submitted “ironically, by one of the [project] partners”.

Only notice summaries, not including attachments and maps, have not been made public. This makes verifying the notices’ claims difficult.

Other responses included: “Others asking for grants to do the same work in the same area” and “There were weak arguments from other local vendors who clearly do not want the competition.”

On the bright side, 2 survey responders said they received a notice of support for their project.

Due Diligence

It’s understandable that an agency making available $4B in grants wants to follow up with grantees to ensure the honesty and integrity of those projects. And with nearly 1900 applications, it can take some time.

Of the 1300 applicants whose applications were declined for funding, 94% of those surveyed did not receive due diligence prior to receiving notice of non-funding. Of those whose applications are still pending, 60% of those surveyed still have not received due diligence correspondence or contact from NTIA representatives.

Of those applicants who did receive Due Diligence followup, the nature seems to be, as one survey response put it “A broad array across the spectrum of categories”:

- budget, cash flows and project costs
- the methodology for determining unserved areas
- pricing and the sustainability of the business model
- demographics
- program usage
- environmental checklist/questionaire
- network architecture

One responder was quite comprehensive:

“We were requested to provide all Step2-Due Diligence documents including organizing docs, evidence of all indebtedness, environmental checklist and maps, depreciation schedule. We also had a site visit with a few topics being discussed, a few maps reviewed, etc.”

Rejection Letters

I’ve been trying to put a pleasant spin on correspondence applicants received informing them their project would not be funded, but it’s easier to call them what they are: rejection letters. From what we know, there wasn’t much else to the letters than that: 70% of our survey responders received no explicit deficiency or rationale to their rejection. The specific language was “Your application was evaluated by objective reviewers and did not score high enough to move forward in the review process.”.

Of the 30% minority of survey responders who did receive a rationale, they can be summarized as
- incomplete application or lack of supporting documents
- insufficient match
- area could not be verified as rural or underserved

For each of these rationales, there was at least someone who felt their application was misjudged:
- “We did not include two forms the application asked for; which was untrue.”
- “Failure to document 20% match when in fact a 30% match was clearly documented in the application”
- “50 miles from an area that was deemed out of bounds, but not according to the information we had available”

What can Round 2 Applicants learn from this?

Despite the transparency of applicant proposals, the evaluation process itself remains opaque to the detriment of Round 2 applicants.

We asked how Round 1 applicants would adapt their proposal for Round 2. The typical response from those with applications still pending was “based on the reason Round 1 was denied”. This will be difficult.

In light of the short window between Round 1 announcements—and their dearth of information—and the Round 2 application deadline, we recommend applicants move forward with their Round 2 application without the expecation of meaningful feedback from Round 1.

No one is immune to making mistakes.
And I have to express admiration to those who will admit it, learn from it, and make the changes necessary to respond to it.
But to make mistakes and changes at such a high level and talk about it, well, that’s like superhero stuff to me.
Take this week’s announcement from the White House:

White House officials are retooling the administration’s communications strategy to produce faster responses to political adversaries, a more disciplined focus on President Obama’s call for “change” in Washington and an increasingly selective use of the president’s time.

The messaging adjustments are the result of an end-of-the-year analysis in which White House advisers said the president’s communications team had not taken the initiative often enough and had allowed drawn-out debates in Congress, and relentless criticism by Republicans, to drown out his message.

Sure, it’s a political move. But what do any of us do for our organizations that isn’t, in essence, a political move to build support and resources for us to do our work better? We constantly hone our messages, revise our plans, and change our methods.
If we keep our eye on the long view, know why we do what we do, and admit why we’re doing it, we can build movements built on trust and openness.
Administration, I say to you: Keep on learning.

I’ve been taking time to digest the The Broadband Coalition’s report on Expanding and Accelerating the Adoption & Use of Broadband Throughout the Economy. What I appreciate most about the report is the systemic approach it takes: leveraging existing community infrastructure, programs and organizations while expanding their capacity to include broadband adoption and use.

I think the approach and recommendations from this report could quite easily be adapted to other media access and literacy campaigns.

The report defines Broadband accelerators as programs that:

• Promote and assist affordable home computer and Internet access.
• Are embedded in established community social and institutional networks.
• Are “High-touch” – based on personal interactions and relationships.
• Provide continuing formal as well as peer support to the new adopter through several critical stages of the “adoption curve”: engage, train, equip and support.
• Integrate basic broadband adoption with other strongly motivating opportunities, e.g. employment, education, public safety, healthcare needs, civic and neighborhood improvement.

This approach can be well-informed by the Community Technology Centers movement: while many centers were founded on offering computer training, they evolved into service centers specializing in employment, education, etc. Broadband adoption, like computer literacy before it, is a means, not an end.

To resource these changes, the report makes some key policy recommendations at each level of government:

At a national level, foster evergreen funding sources to support community efforts needed to help nonsubscribers become confident and effective technology users.

Encourage states to adopt policies and strategies that facilitate and support the building of community-based broadband access and adoption programs.

Encourage local initiatives and local funding to support community-based broadband access and adoption programs.