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Ch. 8 · USAGM / CPB·Proposed·

Suspend Open Technology Fund and fully reinstate Office of Internet Freedom

Mandate labels OTF a wasteful opaque grantee that usurped OIF’s budget and urges full OIF reinstatement for agency/congressional oversight of internet-freedom spending.

Mandate

Mandate Ch. 8 (Media Agencies / USAGM) — Open Technology Fund / Internet Freedom: OTF usurped OIF budget under dubious consolidation; Trump-appointed leadership suspended OTF for grant noncompliance and fraud/waste investigations; Biden reinstated OTF; full reinstatement of OIF would allow full agency and congressional oversight of internet-freedom money.

Undo plan

1) Restore OTF (or successor) grant independence with transparent open-source circumvention funding if OIF monopoly re-centralized political control. 2) Separate internet-freedom tech grants from USAGM newsroom content direction. 3) Publish OIG-tracked conflict-of-interest rules for all freedom-tech grantees. 4) Codify competitive multi-vendor funding rather than single opaque intermediary. 5) Verify: public dashboard of tools funded, users served, and audit findings.

Sources