Telecommunications and Information Technology

The nation's school districts and public libraries are increasingly investing in technology to improve education, communication, and the flow of information. For example, between 1994 and 1997, the percentage of public schools with Internet access rose from 35 percent to 78 percent. But the cost of this technology is high. One market research organization reported that public schools spent an estimated $4.3 billion on technology in school year 1996-97 and projected that they would spend $5.2 billion in school year 1997-98. This testimony reviews federal programs that can be used to fund technology for schools and libraries. GAO (1) lists these programs, (2) describes their features, such as the federal administrative costs, number of federally funded full-time-equivalent positions assigned to each program, the procedures used to award funding, program funding levels, and the authorizing statute or legal authority to provide such funding; (3) describes the potential for duplication; (4) discusses how the Government Performance and Results Act can be used to coordinate and reduce duplication in such programs; (5) describes federal efforts to coordinate federal education and technology programs; and (6) provides information on waste, fraud, and abuse in each program and efforts to eliminate these problems.

GAO noted that: (1) at least 27 programs provide funding that may be used to purchase telecommunications and information technology for schools or libraries; (2) for example, four of the programs specifically target technology funding to schools or libraries; (3) three of these have a combined FY 1998 funding level totalling $565 million; (4) the other program--the universal service discount for schools and libraries, also called the e-rate--has a funding level of $1.925 billion for the first funding period (the 18-month period beginning January 1998); (5) under this program, discounts can be provided to eligible schools and libraries for telecommunication services, Internet access, and internal connections; however, no discounts have yet been funded; (6) the remaining 23 programs do not specifically target technology for schools or libraries but can be used for this purpose; (7) some of these programs target schools or libraries but provide funds that can be used for other purposes as well as technology; (8) others target technology but not exclusively schools or libraries; (9) others do not target funds either to schools or libraries as recipients or technology as a program purpose, but funds may go to schools or libraries and may be used for technology; (10) except for programs targeted both to technology and to schools or libraries, limited information is available on the amounts spent for technology; (11) the FY 1998 funding levels for the more broadly targeted programs ranged from $905,000 to nearly $7.4 billion; (12) among the programs that GAO identified, more are available to schools than to libraries; (13) all the federal programs are authorized by law; and (14) some statutes specifically authorize technology or telecommunications programs; others have authorization broad enough to allow these uses.