Whistle While You Work

 Lowest Corresponding Price (LCP) has grown some teeth. For those who don't know, LCP is a requirement of E-Rate where vendors have to supply services at the lowest price that any similarly situated customer has gotten. Well, years and years ago, a whistleblower pointed out that Wisconsin AT&T was not giving E-Rate participants the LCP. Now the case has been settled, and Wisconsin AT&T will be paying the government $55 million. Much bigger than past settlements.

What's this now? The whistleblower will get somewhere between $8.25 and $16.5 million?! Where did I put that whistle? Gotta go. 

An old friend

It's baaaack! Looks like Appian still hasn't fixed the "Midnight Save & Share" problem. It's only been 9 years since I first reported on it. It's much less annoying than it used to be, because since they fixed Save & Share, you can just reclaim it directly. (9 years ago, someone else with permissions to that form had to snag the form and then Save & Share it so that you could see it and Accept it.) Still, it is a problem.

I wish I had time to figure out what the conditions are exactly that makes this happen, but it only happens during 471 season, so I can't spend time researching. 

Those librarians have some good ideas

The ALA has created a nice sheet about what should be Delete!Delete!Deleted! from the E-Rate program. Let's see if I agree with their suggestions. 

Here's what they'd like to see deleted: 

1. FCC rules on competitive bidding
2. Form 486
3. Annual NSLP checks
4. Application window for C2
5. Inability to make service substitutions

To which I say:

1.  Oh, hell yes! I've been saying for years that the FCC should not be regulating the purchasing decisions of local governments. The arcane rules confuse applicants and conflict with local rules.
2. A solid yes. C'mon, FCC, you already did it for the Cybersecurity Pilot Program: move the CIPA questions to the 471 and scrap the 486.
3. The ALA is suggesting that NSLP percentages get checked once every 5 years, to coincide with the 5-year cycle for Category 2 budgets. I'm all for that. Treat it like the C2 budgets: fixed for 5 years, unless the district wants to change it (if the enrollment and/or NSLP percentage changes to the district's advantage).
4. Why only for C2? We never come close to the program cap these days, so why do we need a filing window? There's plenty of money to go around, and the filing window was created to deal with funding requests exceeding the program cap. Ban the filing window! Want to change your Internet bandwidth in December? No problem, just file a new application. One of your switches starting smoking in January? File an application right then. (Combine this with #1, and you don't even have to wait 28 to make the purchase.)
5. If #4 would come true, there would be no need for service substitutions. Just file a new application. It seems like it would be worse to have to do a 471 for the new service and a Form 500 for the old funding, but it only seems that way if you've never had to do a service substitution; those things are a real PitA. But assuming that we're stuck with the filing window, then yes, applicants should totally be able to increase bandwidth or whatever. Service subs are way too restrictive.

You know what would make service substitutions better? Get rid of FRN line items. Why does the request have to be broken down into a bunch of little buckets? Because whoever made the online form decided to handle things that way; from 5,000 feet up, it looks more efficient. But let me tell you, down here in the trenches, those line items are a major hassle. Just make one big bucket of money, and if you must, list all the equipment or services paid for by that bucket. Then just change the list of items, and don't bother with the size of the bucket of money. Because if the change in items makes the price go up, no prob: E-Rate online funds the original size of the bucket. And if the change makes the price go down, then that gets cleaned up by a Form 500. FRN line items add complexity to the process for no good reason, just because whoever created the online 471 thought they were elegant and cool. They aren't.

Take the win, you fool

Hey, here's a little good news buried in USAC's Federal Universal Service Support Mechanisms Fund Size Projections for Second Quarter 2026. Tucked into page 6, there's a table showing the percentage of improper payments in the USF programs.  For E-Rate, it 1.27%. Huzzah! Why the celebration? Well, in general, it shows how little waste, fraud and abuse there is in the program, which helps the program's prospects for the future.

But it's also good news for applicants this year. Why? Because if that percentage is above 2.5%, that triggers an expansion of auditing in the program. Back in 2008, when I first looked into this number, it was 12.9%. Look at us with a 10-fold decrease! The only other data point I think I've blogged about this was in 2019, when we were at 2.59%. So we've been improving for a while.

I felt like we were getting fewer audits lately; I guess that's real.

I probably shouldn't bring this up (again), but I've pointed out a way they could get that percentage up. See, improper payments should include underpayments. So instead of looking only at payments that were made looking for ones that should have been denied, auditors should also look at payments that were denied, to see if any of the denials were incorrect.  Applicant error is, according to the auditors, a major cause of improper payments. Imagine if they included in their improper payment total every denied funding request or invoice where, if not for applicant error, the applicant would have gotten funded.

Short term, that's a disaster, triggering more audits. But long term, it would provide a strong incentive to make the application process more fool-proof, so we fools wouldn't lose funding that we should get. Imagine if the FCC and USAC got dinged every time an applicant made a mistake that cost them funding. Eventually, the application process would get simpler and simpler. Of course, it's a bit self-destructive for an E-Rate consultant to wish for a simpler process, because no one would need me, but what can I say, I long for a more just world. 

T-LEAPing into the future

Great idea. Now why not make it universal. Over at the Tribal Library E-Rate Advocacy Program (T-LEAP), one of the initiatives they've taken is to accept applications year-round. You heard that right: no filing window for applicants in the T-LEAP program. The increased flexibility has, of course, increased applicant participation. 

Wouldn't it be great to increase applicant participation across the board? So why don't we allow year-round applications for all applicants? The application window was originally created because the E-Rate program always hit its cap, so not all applications could be funded. To keep the application process from turning into a race to apply, the FCC nicely set up a filing window, and said all applications filed in the window would be treated as simultaneous. Well, the program never hits its cap these days. So the filing window is unnecessary. 

The T-LEAP program shows us that we'd get more participation if we had no filing window. Applicants wouldn't be forced to sign illegal contracts. PIA's workload would be more spread out. Changing service mid-year wouldn't be a nightmare. 

As I pointed out 10 years ago, the rules as currently written, in fact, say that applications should be accepted after the close of the filing window if there's still money left. So USAC should be accepting applications year-round already. 

You may say I'm crazy, but I'm not the only one. The American Library Association (ALA) has asked the FCC to allow rolling applications for C2. But why allow year-round applications only for C2? Let C1 apps be year-round, too.

Going one step further, why do we still have C1 and C2? The two Categories (nee Priorities) of funding were only created because the program never had enough money to fund all funding requests. Now that the program has plenty of money to cover all requests....

Cybersecurity Pilot update

I'm listening to the quarterly meeting of the USAC Schools & Libraries Committee of the USAC Board, and I learned some new things about the Cybersecurity Pilot Program (CSPP). 

First, USAC expects to open invoicing by March. Also, they're running an invoicing webinar tomorrow. 

Second, all CSPP applications should get FCDLs by the end of June. For those who didn't know, 172 FCDLs were issued on December 17th. Another wave should be coming out soon. But knowing when the last FCDL will be issued is good news for those of us who have applications languishing in "Certified" status.

GAO: USAC FTW

It's a clean bill of health for the E-Rate! The GAO (Governement Accountability Office) evaluted five programs for their adherence to "nine requirements and leading practices to oversee and prevent fraud, waste, and abuse in awards...." Alone among the five programs, the E-Rate had procedures for all nine.

The GAO has taken a dimmer view of the E-Rate program in 2005, 2009, 2010 and 2017. So it's a nice change to see the program getting a clean bill of health.