Executing on the $2 trillion investment to boost American competitiveness

Three major pieces of legislation were signed into law in late 2021 and 2022—the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).¹ Together, these three new laws represent a massive investment in American competitiveness. They seek to rebuild American infrastructure, accelerate the transition to a green economy, and strengthen the domestic semiconductor industry—all while promoting job growth, workforce development, and equity.

The laws provide more than $2 trillion² in authorized federal funding and incentives (figures 1 and 2) for up to 10 years.³ Funding alone won’t guarantee success, however. To achieve their goals, these laws will require successful execution at all levels of government.

The laws create unique execution challenges. Unlike a law that expands a benefit program or only funds infrastructure construction, these bills use a combination of direct spending coupled with indirect tools such as grants, tax incentives, and loan guarantees. These programs and indirect tools of government seek to alter market conditions and ultimately change the behaviors of the private sector, governments, and individuals. Moreover, execution will require collaboration between federal, state, and local officials, and involve working closely with businesses, educational institutions, and nonprofits.

The goals are lofty. The execution challenges are daunting.

This study explores the execution challenges that lie ahead, particularly the challenges of scale, complexity, and accountability. It describes not only the possible execution pitfalls, but a set of strategies that will help public officials—whether they be federal, state, or local leaders—maximize the positive outcomes from this set of new laws.

Scale: Large dollars, many funding streams

These three new laws, taken in combination, create challenges of scale. Not only do they establish sizable funding streams that flow through many federal agencies, but the sheer volume of activity will stress management capabilities.

There are three types of scale challenges:

1. The forest and the trees challenge: These laws comprise scores of individual programs and initiatives—the trees. At the same time, the programs reinforce one another to further broader goals with numerous interdependencies—the forest. You need to see both.

The temptation is to tackle each individual program in isolation, but siloed execution could lead to massive inefficiencies. Consider a simple stretch of country road. If officials aren’t careful, the road could be dug up to install broadband, repaved, then dug up to install charging stations, and then dug up again to enhance water runoff. Siloed execution also leaves little room for fruitful coordination. For example, benefits can be amplified when job training, infrastructure improvements, and economic development efforts are coordinated within a community.

2. The red tape reality: Each of these laws has multiple programs, and those programs create myriad compliance standards. Moreover, the laws incentivize a variety of business practices, such as paying prevailing union wages and offering apprenticeships. Managing these requirements—and avoiding being overwhelmed by them—will require extensive documentation and reporting, possibly to multiple federal agencies.

3. All hands on deck: Successful execution of the legislation also brings with it talent supply concerns, both for governments that must oversee the work and their private sector partners. Our 2021 Deloitte infrastructure survey found that respondents cited talent shortages as the biggest obstacle to implementing infrastructure projects—more than budget constraints or regulatory barriers.⁴ When thinking about infrastructure talent, it is easy to think of construction workers. But today’s infrastructure also encompasses elements such as renewables, internet services, data management centers, and data analytics. Rewiring America, a nonprofit, expects that the country will need one million additional electricians for the clean-energy transition.⁵

Strategies to overcome scale-related challenges

Establish and/or strengthen the results management office (RMO): When overseeing a portfolio of projects, it is critical to have a project management office (PMO) that tracks progress in terms of spending and project milestones. A central office that tracks progress, funding applications, and expenditures for a group of initiatives can provide decision-makers a 360-degree view of funding flows.

Taking the idea further, public officials could establish a results management office (RMO), which not only plans and tracks progress on a portfolio of projects, but also provides a focus on mission-related results—the outcomes of these projects. Leaders can use an RMO to drive progress by coordinating across agencies, facilitating decision-making, and helping overcome barriers to progress. RMOs can also develop common reporting systems to help agencies measure results on an ongoing basis.⁶

Depending on the portfolio of projects involved, a PMO or RMO might be at the state or local level or at the level of either a state, local, or federal agency. Agency-level tracking can be easier to administer but could reinforce existing silos.

For example, to monitor the effectiveness of installing electric vehicle (EV) charging stations with IIJA funding, a state-level RMO might track multiple goals such as an increase in EV adoption, coverage of stations across different areas in a region, and compliance with federal spending requirements. It could also track critical outcomes such as job creation, workforce development, and equity. The RMO then becomes a critical resource for documenting not only how federal dollars were spent, but the impact of that spending.

Maintain a holistic view of initiatives: To avoid tackling just one small piece of a puzzle, agencies should understand the larger system. Identifying linkages between the laws provides a more holistic view. Take EVs, for instance. IIJA provides $5 billion for EV charging infrastructure. The IRA catalyzes adoption of that network through tax credits of up to $7,500 for new and up to $4,000 for used clean vehicles.⁷ These investments are designed to work in harmony to further a vision of more sustainable transportation. If the chargers aren’t built where EV demand is high, or if consumers lack access to chargers when tax credits materialize, the investments may fail to create the intended impact. The impact to the power grid is a key consideration as well.

Similarly, an RMO can provide a holistic view of projects, including furthering a “dig once” approach for projects spanning across transportation, broadband, and water. Given the high costs and disruption of digging up roads, some small delays to coordinate would be well worth it. Officials can start by identifying the interactions between interrelated initiatives.

Expand the talent pool: Successful implementation of these laws will require access to skilled professionals. State and local governments will need to develop, borrow, or buy this talent. Public leaders should explore investing in their own workforce, working with external partners such as universities to help develop their staff, and supplementing the public workforce through contractors and secondments.

An important objective of the legislation—which offers unprecedented levels of funding to help boost skills—is to augment the private sector talent supply through workforce development initiatives. Governments should identify the skills shortfalls that the industry may experience in the implementation of these programs, and invest in innovative partnerships with government, industry, nonprofits, and educational institutions to close those gaps. Given the surge of investment in transportation, broadband, and green energy, certain construction skills are likely to become execution bottlenecks.

Getting more young people interested in the trades early on and building awareness about apprenticeships and careers in construction, civil engineering, or transportation will be key to creating a steady pipeline of workers. States such as Indiana, Arizona, Texas, and Washington have been emphasizing the benefits of construction jobs, including their potential to pay entry-level professionals more than a liberal arts degree might.⁸ With the motto “Graduate Saturday, jobsite Monday,” Indiana’s Civil Construction Pathways Program offers high school students a three-year career pathway into construction.⁹ The curriculum includes lab activities on paving, bridges, construction inspection, erosion control, heavy-equipment operation, etc., followed by an internship with a local company in their senior year.¹⁰

Complexity: Many participants collaborating on multiple goals

Some tasks involving large expenditures can be relatively straightforward to execute, such as increasing the benefit level of an existing program. Other tasks, however, come with more complex execution challenges, and that’s the case with the many programs stemming from the IIJA, IRA, and CHIPS.

These laws create myriad new programs. They have numerous initiatives with detailed legislative language that may require clarification and input from several agencies. They establish competitive grants, tax credits, and other indirect payments, with funds flowing not only to state and local governments, but to businesses, nonprofits, and academia.

Under IIJA alone, more than 45 federal bureaus and 16 federal agencies and commissions are allocated funding for 369 new and existing programs.¹¹ Grants fund more than 200 programs and represent 78% of the total funding.¹² The multiple programs, levels of government, and goals bring with them complexity challenges.

Complexity challenges

The “ecosystem” challenge: An ecosystem comprises different participants with different goals. And this legislation seeks to influence ecosystem behaviors—a complex task. The CHIPS and Science Act, for example, has earmarked $10 billion for the Department of Commerce to create 20 regional technology hubs across the United States¹³ in partnership with universities and private businesses.¹⁴

Ecosystems benefit from the diverse creativity of their stakeholders. But shaping an ecosystem is not as simple as managing within a hierarchy or overseeing the contract of a vendor. A dynamic ecosystem can have nuanced relationships and feedback loops that require attention from senior officials. Government leaders will need to create the conditions where multiple agencies, corporations, and nonprofits organically work together to address boundary-crossing problems.

The “startup” challenge: New programs are often extra difficult to implement—consider the early stumbles associated with the rollout of the Affordable Care Act in 2013¹⁵ or the Medicare Part D rollout in 2006.¹⁶ New programs are, in essence, startups—no established processes, no precedents, and a workforce figuring things out for the first time. These new responsibilities are sometimes added on to an existing organization, but without the additional resources required.

These three new laws establish more than 160 entirely new programs. IIJA alone has created 129 new programs with more than $226 billion in funding.¹⁷ Seven existing programs worth $275 billion have been substantially revised or expanded.¹⁸ In the IRA, out of the total $228 billion appropriated across 18 federal agencies, more than $80 billion was appropriated for 34 new programs.¹⁹ New programs such as these work best with innovative leaders who can drive change within the public sector—a skill set always in high demand.

The “herding cats” challenge: Competitive grants are a significant portion of these laws, and this sort of competition can promote innovation. But if each community within a state merely chases after the available funding, they may miss the opportunity to cooperatively pursue grants. These programs have different sets of eligible entities, and in some cases, the states will be “subgranting” to local governments. State-level input can help strategically select which programs to pursue, and help bring together communities, nonprofits, universities, and businesses to develop combined solutions rather than strictly individual pursuits.

Strategies to overcome complexity challenges

Manage projects as a strategic portfolio

One planning tool often employed within a PMO or RMO is strategic portfolio management (SPM), a capability that enables governments to deliver value on investments. SPM has three building blocks:

1. Strategic alignment: “What are the right things to do?”
2. Prioritization and planning: “Are we doing (enough of) the right things at the right time?”
3. Controlled delivery: “Are the right things delivering the value we expect?”²⁰

The federal government has suggested that states use a strategy from the 2009 Recovery and Reinvestment Act—state infrastructure coordinators.²¹ In fact, some states have already named IIJA “czars,” but with the additional investments under IRA and CHIPS, it may make sense to broaden the coordination scope.²² With grants pouring in, grantees can find coordinating projects overwhelming, and federal and state governments will need to tap into experts both inside and outside government.

To optimize impact, states should consider coordinating with local governments. As municipalities develop proposals, the state coordinator can connect applicants to experts in specific areas, from water management to EVs. As projects begin, state coordinators can keep the big picture in mind, such as monitoring the supply of in-demand construction materials, providing guidance on navigating the grant process, or managing multiyear funding streams (figure 5).

At the federal level, a good first step is the Department of Transportation’s new Multimodal Project Discretionary Grant program (MPDG),²³ which combines the application for three programs into one.²⁴ Agencies could go a step further by giving extra merit to projects which utilize multiple funding streams to have a network impact—and Congress could potentially provide authority to agencies to coordinate the administration of programs under a common banner.

The right incentives can go a long way in shaping the behavior of both consumers and producers. Existing tax credits to consumers have increased EV adoption and also helped domestic manufacturers scale up EV and battery production.²⁶ The development and adoption of low-emissivity or “low-e” coated windows was a result of a series of indirect tools used by the federal and state governments; as a result, low-e windows have become commonplace in homes and commercial buildings.²⁷ Getting the incentives right and understanding marketplace dynamics are crucial to the successful use of indirect tools. Also important is understanding the diverse objectives of various stakeholders within an ecosystem. The diversity of objectives is a hallmark of society’s “wicked problems” and the initiatives undertaken under these programs seek to accomplish multiple goals simultaneously. It is likely that a single program will be valued as a job-creation program by some stakeholders, as a sustainability initiative by other participants, and as a profit-making opportunity by yet others. Navigating this diversity of perspectives will be key to getting the incentives right.

Adopt a startup mindset—think big, start small, and scale fast

These programs are often mandated to stand up programs quickly. Doing so requires innovative leaders who can drive through a complex web of mandates, question norms, and rethink how things get done. They will have to operate with a startup mindset that is focused on altering market conditions and changing behaviors. The challenge: operating like a startup within a large, bureaucratic system entangled by rules can derail progress.

Many of the new programs are tasked to existing organizations, many of whom will not have the capacity, capabilities, or muscle memory to stand up new programs and to understand how those programs work in harmony with existing federal and state programs. To be successful, implementers should plan deeply and be responsive to shifting circumstances. A startup mentality entails starting small, chunking the projects into modular components, measuring progress towards outcomes, and making mid-course corrections as needed.

Tools such as digital twins and other simulations help to achieve such agility and get the approach right before making less reversible construction decisions. Continuous process monitoring can prompt early-course corrections, which are often far less costly than changes made after implementation.²⁸

Much of the legislation also relies on inputs from numerous participants, both governmental and nongovernmental. Agile governance creates a network of participants that fosters knowledge sharing and collaboration. Functional silos shouldn’t be allowed to undermine an adaptive approach to government.

Accountability: Not just compliance, but maximizing impact

The scale and complexity of these legislative packages create accountability challenges. When multiple agencies are involved, governance issues, including decision-making authority, can bedevil execution.

Measuring progress gets more complicated when there are multiple goals. Tracking spending gets more complicated when funding flows to a variety of partners. And the scale of the dollars involved will attract bad actors.

Accountability challenges

The “who’s in charge here?” problem: How do you achieve accountability when no single person/organization has responsibility from start to finish? Who makes the tough decisions when multiple agencies are contributing to an initiative?

Execution of these legislative packages requires a collaborative effort between multiple agencies and levels of government—and that makes accountability hard. In climate initiatives, for example, private-sector competitors, nonprofits, and governments may form broad coalitions to move the economy toward a low-carbon future.²⁹ Establishing clear authority and decision-making rights among these multiple actors will be key to succeeding at the task.

The “how’d we do?” problem: How can agencies measure/assess the impact of this funding? Did they achieve their (multiple) goals? Which efforts worked well and which need to be reexamined?

When there are multiple goals for the same project, assessing success becomes tricky. For instance, if a project is intended to boost EV vehicle charging stations, enhance the skills of installation workers, and reduce economic inequality all at the same time. Which of these goals are most important? More importantly, what if the EV charging stations get built but few drivers use them? Identifying the right metrics to measure, and then measuring performance and acting on it is a compounding challenge for government, but key to success.

The “thieving squirrel” problem: You put seeds into the birdfeeder, but clever, agile, and highly motivated squirrels manage to eat a big share. The only answer is a birdfeeder designed to limit access and frustrate raiders. With funding levels this large, the problem of waste, fraud, and abuse is real. Especially for agencies that are disbursing sizable grants for the first time, controls baked in up front will be critical. Governments need to ensure proper compliance, reporting, and transparency—or risk rewarding the squirrels and undermining overall trust in the process.

Strategies to overcome accountability challenges

Transparent performance dashboards

The primary question of accountability is this: Did the funding achieve the desired outcomes? Clear evaluation criteria are important, as are transparent data dashboards that publicly share outcomes.

Metrics of success can include multiple outcomes. For example, while the focus for IIJA is on building infrastructure and IRA is on climate action, both bills include strong equity provisions that seek to encourage investments in underserved areas.³⁰ Measures for all these goals should be shared transparently (see sidebar).