Amy Owen is the Senior Director, Digital and Teacher Policy at ExcelinEd.
ExcelinEd is pleased to participate in Ohio’s Broadband-5G Sector Partnership, an innovative collaboration between government, education and industry to strengthen the state’s broadband workforce. We’ve highlighted broadband progress through blog posts and a policy toolkit as well as at our 2022 National Summit on Education.
We recently had the honor of speaking with Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted about Ohio’s continued work to implement education and training programs to fill shortages in this critical workforce.
In 2021, Governor Mike DeWine and I proposed $250 million in state funding to support broadband expansion. As part of the proposed funding, the Governor and I wanted to make sure that we had the skilled workforce to physically build the infrastructure.
Because I also serve as the Director of the Governor’s Office of Workforce Transformation (OWT), our team at OWT began researching the issue and quickly realized the telecommunications industry already had significant workforce challenges pre-COVID. It was only getting worse because of significant investments being made by the industry, states and federal government to address the many broadband access issues laid bare by the pandemic.
Even before that, Ohio was at the forefront of making broadband access a priority. When the Governor and I first entered office in 2019, we created the first statewide broadband office, called BroadbandOhio.
And as we looked at broadband access, we knew that cellular carriers were also beginning to deploy 5G networks. Since 5G deployment would have similar workforce overlaps as broadband deployment, we decided to include 5G in our broadband workforce strategy.
In Ohio, we don’t consider this sector of our economy an “either-or” scenario; we can do both. We know that for Ohio to be competitive in the 21st-century economy, we need a 21st-century workforce.
Back in 2007, as Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives, I created the Choose Ohio First scholarship program. Its goal was to increase degree attainment in key STEM fields, including healthcare. So Ohio has been working on this for many years.
Yet we knew that due to the urgent need to expand broadband access to Ohioans, we needed a focused strategy to address telecommunications workforce challenges. We researched the issue, engaged stakeholders across the industry and developed a strategy. We created the Ohio Broadband & 5G Sector Partnership to serve as the implementation mechanism to turn the strategy into a reality.
Our team moved quickly, from starting work in the spring of 2021 to rolling out our strategy in September 2021. The Sector Partnership was established that following spring. We were able to do this all within a year because our administration was laser-focused on the issue.
The most exciting initial outcomes have been a result of Ohio’s ability to move quickly on this issue. We announced our first program in September 2021, at the same time the statewide strategy was announced. It was our Certified Fiber Optic Technician program, and now we have 11 training programs in operation.
That number includes five Certified Fiber Optic Technician programs, two 5G Readiness programs, three Telecommunications Tower Technician programs and our first in-house training program, called the Broadband Infrastructure Training Program. That one is in a pilot phase, with statewide distribution planned for this summer. We’ve already enrolled more 200 Ohioans in these programs, with a rolling certification rate of over 90%.
With our workforce strategy already bearing fruit, we are now focused on ensuring that our program completers are being placed in telecommunications jobs. We are also focusing on scaling our initial pilot programs to include more institutions and more geographic areas of the state.
In 2023, the most important deliverable for our strategy is getting our regional node structure operationalized. The Sector Partnership was able to secure $9 million in QUEST funding from the U.S. Department of Labor, which is allowing us to create six regional nodes across the six JobsOhio regions of the state. We are doing this through a competitive RFP process that went live on March 1, with node selections to be awarded by July 1.
These nodes will allow our workforce strategy to be regionalized and tailored to the specific telecommunications needs of Ohio’s different regions. Each regional node will be composed of a four-year university, a two-year community college, a local workforce development board and a community action agency. The regional node will be focused on increasing career awareness, starting and scaling education/training programs and leveraging state and federal funding to make it easier to start new programs and also to allow Ohioans to go through these programs at low- or no cost.
Working with a large industry that has many segments certainly can be challenging, because there are competing priorities and needs. We’ve worked hard to make sure that we’ve included all of the relevant industry segments in our Sector Partnership. We’ve achieved that through appointments of key trade associations to serve on the partnership. This allows for open communication and for us to be able to address everyone’s needs in this industry.
We’ve overcome prioritization challenges by focusing our implementation “sprints” on a broad array of deliverables. These intentionally serve multiple industry segments and also require the Sector Partnership to solicit feedback from partnership members. The Sector Partnership meets quarterly and is continually reaching out to our members to make sure they are involved and have input in our process.
Ohio continues to monitor funding opportunities to leverage additional dollars in order to continue the work we’ve done so far. We started by seeding the Sector Partnership with a $3 million GEER II grant, and we secured $3 million through the Good Jobs Challenge to fund its operations through the calendar year 2024. We also secured a $9 million QUEST grant to seed our regional node structure. We will be allocating federal BEAD workforce dollars to sustain operations of the Sector Partnership and regional nodes.
In addition to these dollars, the Governor and I have proposed $500 million in the Ohio budget for equipment and facilities funding. This would support the K-12 and postsecondary education sectors in starting or expanding capacity for education and training programs that support in-demand and critical jobs in Ohio. This would favorably support our broadband workforce strategy.
Beyond launching new programs and expanding capacity, we have championed various programs that help Ohioans—at low- or no cost—to earn credentials and degrees for key telecommunications jobs. This includes Ohio’s TechCred and IMAP programs and the Choose Ohio First Scholarship program mentioned earlier. We’re also making sure all of our broadband and 5G programs are eligible for WIOA funding and other state funding mechanisms through the Ohio Department of Education and the Ohio Department of Higher Education.
My advice to other state leaders is to make broadband and 5G workforce a priority. This is an ongoing challenge, and every state faces similar workforce challenges in this sector. These include an aging telecommunications workforce and, at the same time, accelerated growth through private, state and federal investments to expand broadband access and deploy 5G.
These challenge aren’t going away. So every state that wants to capitalize on the 21st-century economy and the growth that is coming with it needs to be fully connected.
As I say often, those who collaborate best win. You need to bring everyone to the table to address these challenges. And you don’t need to pick winners and losers. States can do it all if you work collaboratively with industry, education, government and workforce stakeholders to get the work done.
