Report
faults oversight of fed Web program
Thursday, March 17, 2005 • ASSOCIATED
PRESS
WASHINGTON -- Federal oversight of the popular "E-rate"
program that helps link schools and libraries to the
Internet is flawed on several levels, congressional auditors
have found.
The $2.25 billion-a-year program provides discounted
Internet access and connection gear to help expand Internet
availability, particularly for people in poor and remote
areas. Yet cases of fraud and abuse, both by schools and
libraries that get the money and by companies that provide
the services, have surfaced nationwide and drawn the ire of
Congress.
In a report being presented yesterday to a congressional
panel, the Government Accountability Office takes the
Federal Communications Commission to task for weak
oversight. The GAO, which is Congress' investigative arm,
identified problems that appear fundamental.
The FCC, for example, does not have useful performance
goals to measure the program's success, the report found. As
one consequence, it is not possible to tell how much of the
increasing connectivity to the Internet can be accurately
credited to E-rate, the GAO said.
The FCC delegates day-to-day management of E-rate to the
nonprofit Universal Service Administrative Company. But the
FCC has never done a comprehensive evaluation to figure out
which federal requirements or policies apply to this
arrangement, the GAO says.
The review also says that the FCC has been slow to
respond to audits of E-rate participants, and that there is
a substantial backlog of appeals involving erroneous
funding.
Overall, the GAO found, the FCC's problems "create
barriers to enforcement, uncertainty about what the
program's requirements really are, and questions about the
soundness of the program's structure and accountability amid
recent cases of fraud, waste and abuse."
In a written response, the FCC acknowledged that the
E-rate program "continues to experience operational and
management challenges." But the agency said it has taken a
series of steps during the past year to improve oversight
and that it has other measures planned.
The GAO report was being presented yesterday to the
House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and
Investigations. Last year, the inspector general of the FCC
told the same subcommittee that E-rate has an unacceptably
high risk of abuse and waste.
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