EDA Update on Operational Modernization

By Ben Page, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Development and Chief Operating Officer performing the non-exclusive functions and duties of the Assistant Secretary

The Economic Development Administration (EDA) is taking important and necessary steps to modernize key operations to best deliver on our mission. These comprehensive actions will launch EDA forward to meet modern challenges and bring our operations in line with EDA’s recent reauthorization.

Since EDA’s reauthorization with the passage of the Thomas Carper Reauthorization Act of 2025, we have made substantial progress in implementation, working to modernize our programming and support locally driven development. We also recently released our tribal economic development resources webpage to provide opportunities and services to support economic success in tribal communities.

Beyond this initial progress, EDA is modernizing our operations to effectively implement these new policies and best serve our stakeholders. To this end, we have taken several important steps.

First, EDA completed the congressionally approved 505 reorganization to better reflect new programming, new offices created in reauthorization, and new operating models.

This reorganization creates two central programming offices. The first is the Office of Regional Operations (ORO). This office houses all our regional offices and is responsible for implementing EDA’s Public Works and Economic Development Act (PWEDA) Programs. EDA remains committed to ensuring our regional presence and focus, maintaining our regional footprint and six regional offices – Atlanta, Austin, Chicago, Denver, Philadelphia, and Seattle. The second is the Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. This office oversees implementation of EDA’s Stevenson-Wydler programs, including Tech Hubs, Recompete, and Build to Scale.

The reorganization also codified our Office of Grants Management to promote standard operating procedures and ensure consistency of grants management. Further, the reorganization placed EDA’s research and technical assistance programs in the Office of the Assistant Secretary to ensure they most effectively support all EDA programs. We established our new Office of Disaster Recovery and Resilience (ODRR), which – together with our two programmatic offices – will ensure our Disaster 2025 Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) successfully brings assistance to those communities hit hard by 2023 and 2024 disasters.

Second, EDA has undertaken a whole-of-agency effort to streamline our operations. This includes actions taken to improve our internal efficiency and to reduce the burden on applicants. Internally, we have focused on harmonizing our processes across all our grantmaking offices and creating standard operating procedures to govern our operations. These changes will result in several thousand hours of saved staff time annually while ensuring that applicants for our programs have a consistent, positive experience working with all our grant offices.

To help applicants and grantees, we have developed new or updated existing standard tool kits for post award management of EDA grants, the first of which- our post-award construction tool- can be found here (ZIP). These customer friendly resources are intended to reduce administrative burden while reinforcing the standard operating procedures across our offices. Additionally, EDA recently proposed three actions to streamline our regulations, remove redundant language, and reduce external burden. Each of these actions will help us accept, review, process, and oversee awards more efficiently.

Finally, EDA has revamped its management structure to provide an appropriate level of executive oversight while reducing chokepoints. For our regional offices, we are shifting to a structure where a single executive oversees two regional offices. These executives now report directly to the Office of the Assistant Secretary to ensure streamlined communications in both directions. This change, driven by the bureau wide reorganization, reduces layers of middle management. This will improve operations while maintaining EDA’s physical office locations. We will continue to operate out of our six regional offices and each of these offices will accept and evaluate PWEDA grant proposals for their respective geographic areas.

Further, we are putting in place procedural changes that empower these local staff to maintain high standards of customer service and responsiveness. This includes hiring a Principal Director for Strategic Planning and Implementation to ensure consistency of operations and programs across all of EDA.

These changes will allow EDA to best meet emerging policy priorities, new statutory requirements, and a changing operating environment. Our improved operating model will allow us to meet this moment more efficiently and effectively. As we implement these changes, we are prioritizing our mission, our people, and the communities we support. I am confident that these changes will allow us to best maximize our efforts to support locally led economic development.