The Inspector General’s January 2012 memorandum, a follow-up to his May 2011 memorandum (see above for both), was issued in response to specific allegations regarding the award, which NTIA viewed as exceeding the scope of its program responsibility.

As part of the evaluation, staff from the Office of Inspector General (OIG) met or spoke with current and former Bay Area officials, including officials from the City of Oakland and the City of San Francisco, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, the Bay Area Urban Area Security Initiative, representatives of Motorola Solutions, Inc., and NTIA staff. In addition, OIG staff reviewed documentation associated with the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program, the BayWEB application and award, project-related documents, and documents pertaining to the efforts at forming the Joint Powers Authority (the Bay Area regional governance body). As part of this evaluation, OIG did not create, impose, establish, or rely on standards or requirements for the project that were not part of the Notice of Funds Availability (NOFA). Instead, the memorandum reports findings regarding each allegation and, accordingly, contains a recommendation and lessons learned.

Finally, we provided a courtesy draft of the memo to NTIA and obtained their feedback. NTIA provided a formal response which is included in the link above.