GAO Gives NTIA Good Marks on BEAD Fraud Controls Without Testing Them

On July 23, 2026, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO)—the legislative branch's audit and investigative agency—released Combating Fraud: Managing Risks in Federally Funded, State-Administered Programs (GAO-26-109100). GAO calls this a "Q&A report," a short-form GAO product prepared for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and addressed to Chairman James Comer R-KY) and Ranking Member Robert Garcia (D-CA). The report examines 20 of the largest federal programs funded by the federal government but run by the states. One of the 20 is the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program, the $42.45 billion broadband deployment program created by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and administered by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), an agency within the Department of Commerce. In BEAD, all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories (collectively called "eligible entities") are award recipients who distribute funds to subgrantees who, in turn, build the actual internet networks. GAO reports BEAD federal obligations of $16.9 billion in fiscal year 2025—the second-largest of the five programs GAO groups under "Infrastructure," behind Highway Planning and Construction at $67.2 billion. Infrastructure as a category accounts for 8.6 percent of the obligations GAO analyzed. GAO's assessment of fraud risk management in these programs is an assessment of federal agencies: GAO gathered fraud risk management information from "federal agencies overseeing the programs," and evaluated the documentation those agencies supplied. State broadband offices were not examined. That matters for BEAD because GAO's own account of how these programs work assigns most subrecipient oversight—in BEAD, the vetting of ISP subgrantees—to states rather than to NTIA. GAO suggests its Fraud Risk Framework "may be applicable to states and subrecipients," and that congressional attention could encourage wider adoption. The findings below cover the federal end of a two-layer system.