Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and IT department’s contribution – a collaboration for the best results.
Transportation agencies in the United States are charged with moving people and products quickly and safely from point A to point B. Information Technology (IT) solutions support everything these agencies do: from bridge design and highway pavement management to construction project oversight and transit route planning.
The landmark Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), passed in November of 2021, allocates $1.2 trillion to support government infrastructure initiatives. More than half of the new spending is focused on transportation and stands to transform transportation in the US.
For transportation-related agencies, this means funds for infrastructure initiatives like replacing bridges; purchasing greener and cleaner transit vehicles; extending public transit routes to underserved communities, and building additional charging stations for electric vehicles.
State and local transportation agencies will need to re-evaluate their long-term plans and strategies in response to the IIJA. The operational impacts will be sizeable, likely dwarfing the impacts of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009. The ARRA required, among other things, launching new projects, justifying act-related costs, hiring new people, changing approval workflows, managing act-related data gathering, and exporting numbers for new federal reporting requirements.
How can IT departments prepare to support agency business areas responding to the IIJA?
The process for disbursing IIJA funds is still being determined. While these disbursement methods are put into place, state and local IT teams can support business areas by helping them clearly identify and share infrastructure project benefits. It is also critical for IT departments to invest in new data and analytical dashboards to help justify project spending through transparent ROI metrics. These investments can also help connect data silos across multiple departments.
Some areas of IIJA focus include:
- Improving the safety of current infrastructure assets
- Modernizing infrastructure assets through replacement or upgrades
- Identifying opportunities to invest in infrastructure modifications to support climate change initiatives with cleaner and greener transportation
- Looking for ways to use infrastructure dollars to foster greater equity, particularly in historically underserved communities
Our experience can help your organization get ahead of the IIJA.
CAI has provided transportation and tolling services for over 20 years, and we've helped our clients respond to federal and state legislation over the decades.
Specific to the IIJA, here are some ways we can help you:
- Following an IT environment assessment, our teams can identify areas where the IIJA funding can be applied and successfully justified -- these applications can help speed up your modernization journey.
- Based on collaborative sessions with your system users, we can design dashboards to deliver analytical insights to help you align with act-specific objectives needed for funding requirements.
- While managing your day-to-day operational IT needs, we can deliver cost-efficiencies to help you free up system capacity and shoulder increased user demand resulting from IIJA actions.
If you have any questions or concerns about what's next in transportation and tolling following the IIJA, contact us to start a conversation.
CAI. We power the possibleTM.
Mike Brion, PMP, CSM, ITIL Expert is a Vice President in CAI’s Public Sector Division, overseeing all services we provide to our state-level Transportation and Tolling clients.
Amy Elizabeth Gish, Esq., ITIL Expert leads CAI’s Transportation and Tolling strategy team. Amy has over 30 years of combined experience in technology, law, and government.
