Repacking and Inventorying Federal Spectrum: The Role of Federal Employees

Abstract

Federal radio engineers have the expertise and job description to perform federal spectrum repacking. However, these federal employees have high costs of coordination due to administrative constraints. The inter-agency structure of federal spectrum management creates fragmentation on spectrum decisions. Radio engineers are disaggregated from their counterparts in other agencies and removed from policy decisions made by spectrum policy committees. Several proposals for institutions to manage federal spectrum have been advanced this year to bring federal spectrum into a modern organizational service. Institutional reform requires a closer analysis of the role of federal employees who perform repacking and inventory of federal spectrum. Institutional reform is needed to incorporate best practices from federal property management to federal radio spectrum reallocation to better align incentives of federal employees, particularly engineers who manage custom and localized federal radio equipment.