State Broadband Efforts Facing Hiring Challenges

States are rapidly ramping up their broadband offices' staffing for the significantly increased funding they will manage, with funding coming via the American Rescue Plan Act, Treasury's Capital Projects Fund and NTIA's broadband, equity, access and deployment (BEAD) programs, said Anna Read, Pew Charitable Trusts' broadband access initiative senior officer. Before the COVID-19 pandemic and waves of federal funding, many state broadband offices had a person or two, maybe four, said Read. She said demand is high for directors, but states also are hiring grant specialists to manage the grants, digital equity specialists to focus on affordability, and GIS and data specialists. The midpoint for advertised salaries for directors has been around $120,000 a year, though it varies considerably across states, she said. Read said state broadband office demand for staffing likely hasn't peaked.

“Everybody’s tapping the same talent,” including not just the 50 states but industry, said Colorado Broadband Office Executive Director Brandy Reitter in an interview. “The federal government has even tapped employees at states to staff the NTIA and the FCC and the Treasury Department,” said Reitter, noting she lost one employee that way. “It’s important to have the right people on the bus. These aren’t programs where you get a lot of time to recover from a hire that wasn’t ideal.”

Colorado’s seven-year-old broadband office was “out of the gates pretty early in our recruitments because we were already established,” said Reitter. Many other states were still setting up their offices or just passing laws to create them, she said. Reitter started her position in February and doubled the office’s staff by June, she said. It helped that Colorado could offer pay competitive with private sector jobs, she said: Not all states can do that.

Reitter’s next challenge will be to staff the back office that will handle contracts, procurement and finance, she said. Those employees will process grantee contracts and monitor deployments. It’s challenging to recruit in those areas due to labor shortages and the jobs being temporary, she said. “It’s really hard to find specific experience in broadband,” but what’s more important to Reitter is finding workers experienced with federal programs, she said.

Consultant Scott Rudd, who until fall 2021 was Indiana broadband director-broadband opportunities, said as federal funding flows to states were beginning to become clearer that year, he started getting dozens of unsolicited job offers from consultancies, law firms, contractors and providers. He said federal agencies are hiring away numerous people.

States can face recruiting challenges for that talent. Offering competitive salaries can mean state broadband officers making more than their bosses, even the governor, he said. Rudd said small states might have an especially tough time bringing in broadband office staffers due to their pay levels.

Citing the specialized skillsets needed to head up state broadband efforts, Rudd said there are likely fewer than 100 people in the U.S. able to do the job effectively. That there's such demand for them means a lot of work will end up being pushed to the private sector, as states and others backfill capabilities with consultants, he said. Heading a state broadband office requires having enough expertise to offset the heavy influence providers have with state legislatures and the FCC and to represent state and local government interests in the BEAD rollout, Rudd said. "It's a very sensitive position, a very cutthroat position," he said.

Part of the challenge on state broadband offices may be the particular pressure and attention on them. "It's a very high-stakes time" for state broadband offices, said Jade Piros de Carvalho, Kansas Office of Broadband Development director. While they are doing legacy digital divide work that can improve communities, "it's a lot in a very condensed time frame," she said.

“Many states are struggling,” CCG Consulting President Doug Dawson said. “There is not a big universe of folks in the industry with the fully rounded experience it takes to launch a grant program or to review grant proposals. A lot of states are staffing lower positions with folks with no industry experience.” It could be challenging “for a state to decide to challenge any of the NTIA rules without highly knowledgeable staff that understands the nuances of the ISP industry,” Dawson said. “It’s looking to be incredibly challenging to find the folks with enough experience to review a complex grant application when the applicant ISP will … paint the best picture of its capabilities.”

Lack of experience rather than competition with other states has made hiring harder, said Erika Henry, deputy director of Washington state’s broadband office. The digital divide isn’t new, but “it’s a novel time to be able to address the problem,” she said. Finally getting federal investment creates a big opportunity, but “a ton of catch-up” needs to happen across the workforce.

Henry said she was “blown away” when two especially qualified candidates applied recently for one of three open roles in her state. “We haven’t seen that experience necessarily walking through the door.” Many candidates have good community or planning experience, but it has been harder to find “unicorn candidates” who “understand the why of the work that we do and who really feel a connection to our mission,” said Henry. One particularly difficult position to fill is digital equity manager, which requires a “lived experience” understanding digital equity, she said.

“It is an absolute challenge to see a surge in the marketplace,” Maine Connectivity Authority President Andrew Butcher told us. “We’ve got 50 states all looking to hire digital equity” officials simultaneously. And state broadband offices face the same challenges as other employers, including a tight labor market, high demand for workers and low unemployment rates, he said. Broadband offices particularly require a diverse range of expertise, including on policy, data, finance, administration, communications, and community development, he said.

“Broadband and digital equity are not a natural language for most people,” said Butcher, who noted even he had no prior experience in telecom or public finance. “Yet I am essentially running a telecommunications infrastructure bank.”

“We’ve been immensely successful in staffing up -- and it is a major challenge,” said Butcher, the MCA’s first employee when it started up in 2021. “The need to build a high-capacity team has been really critical since day one.” Butcher hired 12 others over the past 12 months, he said. Compared with other states attempting to do the same thing, “it seems like we’ve been moving at lightning speed,” said Butcher. “I think many places are envious.” The MCA is now hiring for three positions, including a digital equity coordinator; it plans to look for a grant officer and a project manager within two months, he said.

Some states are talking about how they might share resources, said Butcher, citing interstate dialogue happening through the Federal Reserve. States could share analysis, training and even staff, he said. MCA is sharing one employee with Maine’s transportation department and is “open to that with even interstate agencies.”

Minnesota’s Office of Broadband Development sent an email Nov. 30 about a Nov. 4 job posting with a Dec. 2 closing date for a broadband program administrator. “Position is telework eligible up to 5 days per week!” said the email. The office was evaluating applicants and had hoped to have offers for two grant administrator positions by the end of 2022, a spokesperson said.

Oklahoma's Commerce Department advertised earlier in the fall an open state broadband office director position. Salary was $205,000, with qualifications including five to 10 years' experience in management of telecommunications, business, government or a broadband-related think tank, and responsibilities including provision of policy advice to the state's executive branch on broadband deployment issues, leading the agency's legislative efforts and overseeing creation and periodic revision of Oklahoma's statewide broadband plan. The Oklahoma Broadband Office emailed us that the job posting closed and the Oklahoma Broadband Governing Board's hiring committee is interviewing candidates with the expectation it will recommend finalists to the full board, probably at its meeting later this month.