Avoiding pitfalls in geospatial grant administration

State broadband offices have had a busy 2024 juggling challenge processes, preparing for an onslaught of BEAD applications, stakeholder engagement and many more issues thrown at their mighty, but often small teams. 

Going forward, states should protect their legacy of success by ensuring that the five pitfalls of geospatial grant administration are avoided. These pitfalls are:

1. Fragmented tools → fragmented results

Offices that try to build in-house tools or repurpose off-the-shelf software built for very different purposes tend to see heavily fragmented workflows and heavily fragmented program outcomes. Your success depends on your vision being enforced throughout the full lifecycle of your program, which requires a holistic platform approach.
 

2. GIS as an island 

Many offices deal with maps through the 1960's lens of GIS. They purchase exquisite GIS systems that spit out fancy maps with no real purpose beyond visual display. Success in your program requires integrated geospatial reasoning, not fancy maps.
 

3. The myth of linear adjudication

Approaching adjudication and deconfliction as linear processes that can be solved with manual effort leads to suboptimal outcomes at best and can be disastrous. Hundreds or even thousands of wasted hours can be one cost of this pitfall, and worse. Adjudication is a complex, non-linear, iterative process, ideally one your office carries out with participants over the course of your program.
 

4. Audit-ready or not?

Unhappy providers are already taking legal action against state offices. Sub-grantee audits by federal agencies are a given. Every step taken by every member of your office must be accounted for. Making sure you securely store all provider-submitted info, track all communications with providers, and having an audit trail of your program are keys to ensuring your office, and all of your sub-grantees are audit-ready.
 

5. Post-award Hell

Imagine not knowing where your program stands until a few months after sub-grantees submit self-reported, manually assembled reports. Either someone from your office or your consultant needs to chase down paperwork every few months, then spend dozens of hours processing results before you know whether or not you're on track.

Now imagine knowing at a glance, in near real time, where your office stands across all of your programs, with no additional effort on your office's part.

Here’s how you can avoid these pitfalls: 

1. Use a purpose-built, single source of truth platform

With the BEAD showdown on the horizon, state broadband offices cannot risk any threats to their progress, such as team changes, misplaced documents or shoddy mapping – which are the downstream consequences of purchasing off-the-shelf software that is not purpose built to tackle BEAD.

The Ready State Platform allows for you to run your entire process from challenge to allocation inside a single platform. Through the platform, states will be able to build custom project areas and expand upon existing ones while also having a deconfliction & adjudication engine that can be tailored to their specific visions. 

The platform’s built-in location revision feature allows SBOs to negotiate back and forth allowing for an ISP to “concede” or “expand” their project area allowing them to cover the entire area of another application or give up all of the conflicted locations. 
 

2. Integrate geospatial reasoning

Under the BEAD program, state broadband offices face the Herculean task of ensuring that their state’s share of the $42.5 billion dollars leaves no family behind in broadband. To accomplish this, geospatial technology must be incorporated in every step of the grant administration process. Doing so ensures that locations are properly visualized, project areas are clearly defined and that their state’s mapping is the source of truth for the state’s broadband reality.

The Ready State Platform incorporates geospatial technology into every step of the BEAD process. This means no more relying on spreadsheets and location files, but instead having a clear, easy-to-use mapping system throughout the process.
 

3. Iterate to amazing

Your office cannot afford to view adjudication as a one and done, fire and forget type of task. State broadband directors have to shift their perspective and view iterative adjudication as the best opportunity to ensure that families aren’t left behind on  the wrong side of the digital divide. 

Using the State Platform, grantors can submit specific revision requests or file a bulk request to review the selection of an applicant’s serviceable areas, network design, project scope, budget, community impact, affordability, and certification certification.

Having all of these functionalities on a single platform streamlines the process and allows for an iterative process with fewer opportunities for mis-inputs and miscommunications that could result in costly delays and missed opportunities; every change between versions is saved, thereby giving your office the ability to compare and track changes to better understand how applicants respond to your feedback.

Ultimately, this will result in fewer locations being left behind, fewer wasted months of complex work between multiple platforms, and fewer potential audit failures and unforeseen legal risks for your office. 
 

4. Be ready to for an audit…or two

The Ready State Platform ensures that states are federal audit-ready with numerous tools, including Proof of Passings in conjunction with the ongoing Challenge Process Coordinator map update. 

BEAD applicants will also undoubtedly have questions throughout the reviewing, scoring, deconfliction, and adjudication processes that must be answered quickly by their state broadband office. Effective communication is crucial for successful, data-driven state broadband offices.

Your State Platform will grant the opportunity for you to seamlessly communicate with providers directly through the same platform guiding your BEAD process. This also means that your office will have a database of communication with each provider that can be referenced for customer success or strategic purposes in the future. 
 

5. Automate reporting and compliance 

Attempting to manually adhere to reporting and compliance standards is a nonstarter. Offices have neither the luxury of time, the budget nor the manpower to do this work alone; reporting and compliance needs to be a seamless extension of reviewing, scoring, deconfliction, and adjudication. 

State broadband offices must hold all stakeholders to the highest standards of reporting and compliance. Throughout the BEAD process, states will face numerous federal audits and having a piecemeal program is a recipe for risk. 

States using the platform can ease the burden of reporting and compliance on both their office and providers while avoiding the market failure of previous broadband grant funding cycles. 

Remember what’s at stake 

State broadband offices know what’s at stake for families relying on them to bring affordable, reliable broadband. BEAD is the country’s largest and arguably last major investment in broadband. 

In the Year of BEAD, states have accomplished so much towards this effort. Allowing the pitfalls of geospatial administration to erode this progress is an opportunity that neither states nor providers can afford.