FCC IG Finds ACP Metrics, Outreach Need Improvement Based on 2022 Performance

The FCC has made “significant progress” in its handling of the affordable connectivity program during 2022, but “improvements were needed” in measuring and providing public transparency on grant recipients’ spending of program money, the Office of Inspector General said in a Jan. 22 memo to Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel and other commissioners that publicly circulated Tuesday. Some congressional Republican leaders have raised concerns about the FCC’s handling of ACP amid a push to provide the program stopgap funding to keep it running through the end of this year. The Wireline Bureau said earlier this month it would freeze new enrollments Feb. 8 as part of the program's wind-down process.

A final report on the OIG audit, which circulated with the FCC commissioners’ memo, said the FCC “established program goals and performance measures” for ACP, but “the performance results were not assessed with specific performance indicators and quarterly milestones for the period under audit. The FCC would benefit from a formally documented performance plan with objective(s) and measurable and quantifiable goals for the ACP program.” Kearney & Co., which conducted the audit on OIG’s behalf, “did not identify errors with the FCC or [the Universal Service Administrative Company] controls established to determine participating providers’ eligibility,” the report said: “However, we found that USAC did not have effective controls in place to ensure that manual reviews of subscriber eligibility documents resulted in correct subscriber eligibility decisions. Kearney also found that the FCC and USAC don't have an effective process for determining if providers are maintaining proper documentation that supports reimbursement claims.”

The FCC “established a process for consumers to file the ACP-related complaints for the FCC to investigate complaints and for participating providers to inform subscribers of how to file a complaint; however, the FCC did not publish any consumer complaint reports,” OIG said. “Additionally, the FCC did not create a policy or procedure related to the ACP complaints process.” The commission conducted outreach to promote ACP, but “the methods of outreach, other than grants, were not designed to gather information used to determine effectiveness and were employed prior to FCC establishing monitoring baselines for” the program, OIG said: “Also, not all of the other outreach methods used targeted low income or under- and un-served consumers.”

The FCC “partially” concurred with the OIG’s findings but raised concerns about “some audit statements” and some of the methodology Kearney used to determine that 10 out of the 406 sample ACP reimbursement claims from participating ISPs “could not substantiate” claims. Two of the providers Kearney found “did not respond to requests … stated that they were not contacted by the auditors, and thus not given a chance to provide responses to the auditors in accordance with the auditing standards,” said FCC Managing Director Mark Stephens in a memo attached to the OIG report. “The Commission relayed these facts to the auditor and sought a response. We remain concerned the auditors finalized the Audit Report without allowing time to ensure with confidence the two providers were aware of their response obligations to address the auditor’s concerns.” The FCC “has taken steps to ensure compliance” with both providers, he said.

The finding about the FCC’s outreach program “ignores the underlying challenges, including strict statutory mandates and other requirements, that the Commission overcame in setting up a grant program, and the resulting success of enrolling over 22 million subscribers in the program by the end of 2023,” Stephens said. The FCC “has also implemented a dedicated ACP consumer complaint process and released ACP consumer complaint data to the public in accordance with requirements.”