WASHINGTON-The Bush administration signaled it is open to bold reforms on government use of the airwaves, a possible shift that could meet resistance from federal agencies at a time when the president’s struggling spectrum-policy initiative remains very much a work in progress.
“Today, federal agencies are not affected by market forces. Federal spectrum management is an administrative process in which economic value plays little or no role. An incentives approach recognizes that spectrum has a measurable value and opportunity cost. Management reforms based on economic incentives, such as fees or greater rights or something else, incorporate that value into the decisions federal agencies make about usage and procurement of new systems,” said Commerce Deputy Secretary David Sampson in prepared remarks for delivery to a spectrum conference last Tuesday at the National Academy of Sciences.
It is unclear why Sampson, a Bush business colleague from Texas confirmed by the Senate to the post six months ago, would suggest progressive but potentially controversial ideas-such as injecting economic incentives into federal spectrum management and trading/leasing frequencies reserved for the military and other government agencies-when the Bush spectrum plan already is in such a state of flux.
Indeed, deadlines from last year remain unmet for the Commerce Department to submit to the White House two key reports. One is a progress report on the implementation of 24 spectrum-reform recommendations from a pair of June 2004 department reports. The second is a plan to identify spectrum incentives to encourage more efficient use of frequencies without compromising homeland security, critical infrastructure and government services.
The reports, which were due Nov. 30, are in inter-agency clearance, said Clyde Ensslin, a spokesman for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. The Commerce Department owes the White House another report in May, this one based on spectrum requirements of more than a dozen federal agencies hand-picked for the review by Commerce itself.
Adding confusion to the delay is NTIA’s acknowledgement that it is working to implement spectrum-reform recommendations that have not received a public-or possibly private-official sign-off from the White House, and the agency’s claim of making strides without being able to point to concrete examples.
NTIA said various working groups have held meetings to implement recommendations involving domestic and international spectrum policies, information technology, public safety, engineering analysis and technology assessment, spectrum review and authorization and spectrum planning/reform. The make-up of the working-level groups is not known and details remain sketchy.
RCR Wireless News has filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Commerce Department to get more clarity on how NTIA is handling the Bush spectrum initiative.
With major economic and national security implications attached to how the administration may want to manage an increasingly depleted spectrum resource in great demand by the government and private sector, the Bush spectrum-policy initiative has serious implications. But it is unclear whether the political commitment, leadership and resources exist to follow through on a plan viewed at once ambitious and superfluous.
In recent years, NTIA and the Federal Communications Commission-especially the latter under former chairman Michael Powell-have pushed through spectrum reforms strikingly similar to those in the Bush plan. For example, the Bush initiative calls on NTIA and the FCC to identify 10 megahertz for a government-commercial spectrum-sharing test bed. But that and other challenges already have been addressed through successful negotiations with the Pentagon enabling hundreds of megahertz of spectrum at 5 GHz to be accessed for Wi-Fi in a technologically sophisticated manner that avoids interference to military radar.
NTIA, the Commerce Department unit responsible for the stewardship of the Bush spectrum initiative, is in a fragile position. The agency has no permanent chief following the recent departure of former NTIA head Michael Gallagher. NTIA is expected to lose other team members this year. Moreover, President Bush, with approval ratings dropping in his second term and besieged by other pressing issues-terrorism, Iraq and Katrina-is not in a position to be the kind of cheerleader on spectrum, broadband and high-tech issues he was in the past.
Unlike other major wireless initiatives-3G spectrum, 5 GHz Wi-Fi and ultra-wideband, in which NTIA played major roles and which resulted in tangible policy successes-the Bush spectrum initiative is far more amorphous. Gallagher and former NTIA chief Nancy Victory, can point to actual wireless legislation or regulation that came about because of their work at NTIA.
With the Bush administration possibly overreaching on its spectrum-policy initiative, NTIA No. 2 official John Kneuer may be facing a no-win situation.
The Office of Management and Budget also has a key role in the Bush spectrum initiative, but clear details about the role and the weight of importance given that role remain vague and unclear. In June, OMB provided guidance to federal agencies to improve capital planning and investment control procedures in order to identify spectrum requirements and the cost of investments in spectrum-dependent systems.
Federal agencies were to have completed those actions by Nov. 30. OMB has been evasive about whether all the agencies that received guidance have come into compliance, saying only that progress is being made.
