There are almost as many flavors of IT projects as there are municipalities. Some projects aim to enhance the response capability of public safety. Others start out with an aim at bridging the digital divide or making government more efficient. Grants support all these efforts, and many grant programs have been deployed successfully to enable IT projects to achieve their objectives.

Because grants tend to fund a solution to a problem or identified issue, they usually fund the applications that leverage the technology to achieve the objectives of the project, rather than making the acquisition of technology an end in itself. Indeed, grant-funded applications provide an immediate use for the network and a compelling justification for its procurement. To the extent that a grant-funded technology will use the agency’s infrastructure, grants will often fund elements of the infrastructure itself – keep in mind, though that it’s almost always in a context of a larger functionally-oriented project.