Biden NTIA Appoints CSMAC Members Ahead of Trump Arrival
NTIA sent letters over the weekend to members of the newly reconstituted Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee saying they had been appointed to serve. The letters ask that members respond by Jan 15. CSMAC is unlikely to meet before the end of the Biden presidency in just two weeks, industry officials said Monday.
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The letters were emailed after reports emerged last week that NTIA still hadn’t relaunched the advisory committee after seeking applicants more than a year ago (see 2501030041). Copies of the letter were dated Dec. 30 but emailed on Saturday. NTIA didn't comment.
“Committee members offer expertise and diverse perspectives on potential reforms and other actions needed to enable new and innovative technologies, services, and applications,” the letter states: “Your appointment as a Special Government Employee is effective immediately, subject to receipt of the required security and financial disclosure forms.”
CSMAC was assigned a large role in the administration’s national spectrum strategy (see 2501030041). But the group hasn’t met since December 2023.
Free State Foundation President Randolph May criticized NTIA for acting just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump takes office. “After such a long delay in reconstituting the committee, it’s ill-timed and odd for the Biden administration to be trying to make the appointments going out the door,” May said Monday. The Trump administration “should be able to reconstitute and relaunch the committee.”
The appointments mean the incoming administration won't have the chance to “populate the advisory committee as it sees fit,” said a former federal official: “The group represents a solid cross-section of the industries affected, but it is an opportunity to lock in the Biden administration's chosen” committee. “It feels more like a last-minute check-the-box move than a genuine effort to set CSMAC on the right path,” said Kristian Stout, director-innovation policy at the International Center for Law & Economics.
But Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Program at New America, one of those reappointed, welcomed the development. “Reconstituting CSMAC now avoids any further delays and should give the new administration a head start in getting expert input on important spectrum policy and allocation questions,” he said. Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld, a former CSMAC member, said spectrum remains a “big unknown” in the next administration, including “whether they will simply tear up the national spectrum strategy” or “keep parts of it.”
Joe Kane, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation director-broadband and spectrum policy, said in an email that as more tough issues emerge in spectrum policy, “multistakeholder collaboration” is critical: “The new administration should be eager to empower CSMAC as a means of convening experts and leveraging their expertise to keep abreast of technological developments and find opportunities for mutually reinforcing solutions.” Kane added: “A shrinking role for CSMAC would amount to a shrinking role for collaboration in spectrum policy.”