California Department of Technology
HR&A serves as lead strategic advisor and program manager to the California Department of Technology, helping to deliver the nation’s largest middle mile broadband investment and building the state’s digital equity ecosystem. We function as an extension of state leadership teams, building organizational capacity, delivering complex quantitative and qualitative analytics, and engaging thousands of Californians alongside hundreds of local governments, community organizations, and technology companies to design programs, secure funding, and drive measurable impact.
As core members of the Broadband Equity Partnership (BEP), HR&A and CTC partnered with the California Department of Technology (CDT) to deliver expert advisory and program management services driving their broadband expansion and digital equity work. Together, we helped CDT strategically deploy $3.9 billion in federal funding to expand broadband accessibility statewide and manage a $4 million grant from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to develop California’s Statewide Digital Equity Plan.
California faced a historic challenge: deploying unprecedented broadband funding across a vast and diverse state while closing persistent digital divides. We brought strategic and technical expertise to implement the Middle-Mile Broadband Initiative and provided critical technical assistance and programmatic consultation throughout all project phases, from researching best practices to identifying key strategic considerations for the statewide open-access middle-mile network development. We built a governance framework that balanced equity, efficiency, and strict federal compliance.
HR&A’s program administration orchestrated multiple workstreams that ensured the success of California’s Digital Equity Planning Grant. We led a comprehensive, statewide stakeholder engagement process, designed and implemented a public survey that garnered over 40,000 responses, and developed a digital equity ecosystem mapping tool. These insights directly informed California’s Digital Equity Plan, which won federal approval and unlocked an additional $70 million in federal funding.
Through our collaboration with CTC, HR&A helped California establish a sustainable framework for broadband expansion that will connect to develop a plan for closing the digital divides and creating lasting economic opportunities for millions of Californians.
