Common Sense comes to the E-Rate

I just learned of a resource that I thought I'd pass along.

As all you school folk should know by now, the FCC has implemented a change to CIPA requirements effective July 1, 2012.  By that time, schools need to update their Internet safety policies to “provide for the
education of minors about appropriate online behavior, including interacting with other individuals on social networking websites and in chat rooms and cyberbullying awareness and response."

Shortly after the law was passed in 2008,a couple of vendors started offering canned curricula to meet this requirement, and have sent out unsavory marketing emails with dire and misleading warnings about loss of E-Rate funding, and offering to provide a "appropriate online behavior curriculum" for a price.

Now it is actually time for dire warnings: comply with the new requirement by July 1 or lose funding.  And today, I learned of a free resource for curriculum from Common Sense Media.  I think you have to register (giving your name, email address and school) to get the content, but it's free and looks comprehensive.

(By the way, for you parents out there, Common Sense Media also offers pretty good movie reviews when you're wondering if the latest movie releases are appropriate for Junior.)

E-Rate milestone

How did this escape my notice?  A better question: why wasn't this the subject of a News Brief?

Ever looked at a 470 number?  At first glance it just looks like a painfully long string of numbers that you have to enter in FRN after FRN when you're filling the 471.  But those of us who have looked at thousands of them see a pattern: a 5-digit random number (hey, just like the PIN for a 471), then 4 zeroes, then a 6-digit number.  And that 6-digit number is sequential, just like the 471.

But no more!  On January 16th, the Archbishop Borders Elementary School clicked Submit on Form 470 #185380001000000. That's right, the millionth 470 has been filed!  Cue the confetti!

Well, it's only the millionth 470 created, not submitted, but don't rain on my confetti.

So usually the millionth customer gets some kind of prize.  What would be an appropriate prize?

Nearing compliance

Three appeal decisions hit the streets today.  One is a single appeal, but the other two are big piles of waivers, one for late 471 filings, one for late 486 filings.  Two things struck me:

1. The FCC made no attempt to explain why the appeals were granted or denied.  The basically just said, "Here's what we're waiving, here's what we're denying."  Which makes it look like some waivers have become truly routine, which is good.  On the down side, t provides no precedent for later appellants, but there is enough precedent out there for this kind of waiver.
2. Of the 53 appeals decided, the oldest was from June, a mere 7 months ago.  Most of the appeals were from October or later. If they're not careful, the FCC is going to start complying with the requirement that all appeals be decided within 90 days (see 47 C.F.R. 54.724)

So I hope that the WCB has a wonderful weekend, because they've earned it.

Over-extended

Today's interesting factoids from our database guy:
Currently, there are roughly 16,800 FRNs extended for 2010-2011.  Out of a total of 134,000 FRNs total in 2010-2011, of which 118,000 are funded.  So over 14% of funded FRNs are extended at the moment.

Does that seem like a system that's working?

Holiday cheer, but not where you expect it

Here is the FCC's Christmas gift this year: an appeal decision granting waivers to applicants with no contracts.  It appears that the requirement to have a contract before filing the 471 is actually more like a requirement that you have something like a contract close to the time of filing the 471.

But instead of just celebrating this cheery decision, I'm going to whine.  After all, that is what readers have come to expect.

First of all, I will reiterate that the FCC's requirement that school districts and public libraries sign contracts in March for services that start in July and end the following June is illegal.  When I called an individual who helped write the public purchasing law in NJ, and explained the E-Rate contracting requirement to him, his response was, "But that's illegal!"  Since budgets for the following fiscal year aren't approved, it is illegal to sign contracts for that fiscal year.

Second of all, the FCC waived the rules for 40 appellants, and granted 7 appeals on their merits, without telling us which appeals fall into which category.  OK, so it makes no real difference to the applicants, and there are probably only 2 or 3 people in the world who would actually take the time to go back and look at the appeals that were granted, but consarn it, I am one of those people.  I want to know the 7 appeals where the FCC thought USAC had it wrong, so that I can learn more about the FCC's thinking, and use this decision as a precedent in future appeals to the FCC and USAC.

But here's the record-scratch moment from this decision: "In addition, we grant...petitioners waivers of our filing deadline for appeals because we find...the late-filed appeal would never have been necessary absent an error on the part of USAC."  Wait, did the FCC just say that in cases where USAC makes a mistake, the filing deadline will be waived?!  Let's check that footnote: "Based on the record, USAC erred in its decision to deny funding for these petitioners for not having a signed contract in place when the Form 471 was submitted.  If USAC had not erred, the petitioners would not have had to file an appeal."

So there's no statue of limitations on USAC error?  Even I can't find anything to complain about with that policy.  It seems only fair that if applicants can lose funding for mistakes made up to 5 years ago, we should be able to appeal mistakes made for at least 5 years.

Bah! Humbug!

Call me Ebenezer.  So close to Christmas, I'm going on another rant.  And on a topic I've ranted to death, no less.  So if you don't want me to chip away at your holiday mood, maybe you should skip this one.

I'm going back to competitive bidding.  Something I said in my last post on the subject has got me thinking.

[Finding new ideas in my own writing would seem to indicate at least one of the following:

1. My ability to form complete thoughts leaves something to be desired.
2. I spend too much time reveling in my own prose.
3. I'm tossing crap onto this blog before I've thought it through.
4. My mind moves so fast, even my own mind can't keep up.
5. My writing is incredibly  thought-provoking.]

Anyway, the statement that got me thinking was, "the main goal of most competitive bidding rules is to prevent cheating, not lower costs."  Let's face it, the FCC rules are not going to prevent cheating for two reasons:

1. They can't catch cheaters.
2. They can't punish cheaters.

The FCC can't catch cheaters because they have no subpoena power and very limited audit resources.  Look at all the major cheaters that have been caught.  They've either been caught by district attorneys or school district audits or both.  With its limited investigatory ability, the FCC is only going to catch people who make stupid mistakes.  And competitive bidding rules don't prevent stupid mistakes.  (Improving the tools available to applicants would prevent stupid mistakes, but that's a different rant.)

So when cheaters do get caught, what is the punishment?  Well, the district attorneys dish out huge fines and jail time.  The FCC does 2 things:

1. Debar individuals for 3 years.
2. Take back the funding from the applicant.

I've posted before about the irony of giving a 3-year debarment to someone going to jail for 5 years.  I mean, you could file an appeal with the FCC, get debarred, and be back in the E-Rate business before the appeal was decided.  (Actually, the FCC has handed out at least one 10-year debarment, but the only effective debarments would be against service providers, and there the FCC seems to hand out 6-month debarments, if there is any debarment at all.)  So you catch someone cheating and the punishment is that they can't cheat any more for 3 years?

And taking money back from the applicant doesn't hurt the perpetrators.  If the cheaters gave a fig about their employers' well-being, they wouldn't cheat.  (My favorite case is one where a district alerted the FCC to a $5 million fraud by their Tech Director, and now the FCC is after the district for $3 million, even though the district never got any money or equipment.)

Where's the harm?  Well, the restrictions imposed by competitive bidding rules increase the cost of procurement.  Apart from the wasted staff time, the decreased flexibility often prevents applicants from purchasing what would be a more cost-effective solution.

The FCC's toothless competitive bidding rules drive up costs without preventing cheating.

How can we deter cheaters?  In all the cases mentioned, existing laws resulted in prison time.  So let the legal system catch the cheaters.  

So for Xmas this year, I'd like Santa to take the Form 470 back to the North Pole with him.  Then he can stick one in the stockings of bad children.

Who's missing the gravy train?

Funds for Learning has posted a short report on the 2009 funding year.  So I thought I'd steal a little of their data, and see what the participation rate is among different categories of applicants.

I got my info on the number of libraries from the American Library Association, and on the number of schools and districts from the U.S. Dept. of Education.  Here are the results:

Category	Total	Applied	Participation
School Districts	13,809	12,833	93%
Schools	33,740	7,142	21%
Libraries	9,225	3,672	40%
Consortia	n/a	439	n/a

I'm kind of suspicious of the data, because I think the FFL data is pulled from the selection the applicant makes on the Form 471, and so a school with multiple locations might apply as a district.  Elsewhere, the DoE put  the total number of districts in the country at 16,850.  In the other direction, I have seen single-school districts apply as a school.  Also, consortia contain applicants from the other 3 categories, so participation is higher for all categories.  But let's just take the numbers as roughly correct.

93% is much higher than I expected.  I would have guessed 80%.  I mean, anything that's voluntary, it's hard to get more than 80% participation.  And I see a lot of districts not applying, but I guess that's because I'm looking for those districts.  It we use the DoE's other total number of districts (16,850), the participation drops to 76%, which I find more believable.  Still, that's a good participation rate.

The libraries number is also higher than I expected.  Between the need for a tech plan, the thorny first-amendment infringement inherent in CIPA, and the small telecom/Internet spending for most libraries, I had expected to see a number closer to 20%.

The schools participation is kind of embarassing.  Only 1 in 5 apply, which is lower than I had expected.  And since most of them have some kind of filtering in place, it's really just a matter of tossing together a tech plan and filling out the paperwork.  Now with no tech plan required for Priority One, perhaps we'll see a boom in requests from this sector.

In general, I wonder if we'll be able to see a change in participation now that the tech plan requirement has been relaxed.  

If I were more ambitious, I'd look at the percentage of entities in each category get Priority Two funding.  I'll bet school participation would drop into the single digits.