Characterizing State Governments’ Administrative Capacity for Broadband

This study investigates how the state governments of the United States may differ in their organizational and operational administrative capacity to manage broadband availability and expansion. State governments are currently preparing for an influx of funding for broadband from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) passed in 2021, which will be devolved from the federal government to the state level. As such, we seek to characterize how the states may differ in their preparedness to manage funds and achieve desired impacts. We construct a dataset using publicly available information about state governments to investigate similarities and differences, as well as consider how and why variation in administrative capacity may or may not be consequential in the future. This exploratory work sets up future study about the influence that pre-IIJA administrative capacity for broadband may have on IIJA policy implementation and its overall effectiveness.