The first contact was a phone call from a BearingPoint employee. BearingPoint is the firm that was selected to conduct the site visits. The employee left a message with an 800 number, and she answered when I called back, knew the visit I was calling about, and told me that the visit would be on August 9th; what time would I like to do it? Well, August 9th I'll be presenting at the NJ Dept. of Ed's Generation Next conference, so I asked if I could do another day. At first she said no, but I was nice, and offered to meet any other day that week, so she said I could have August 8th at 10:00 a.m. Done.
Later that day, I received by email attachment a notification letter, laying out what documents I need to supply and what the visitors will do during the visit. It's a pretty clear letter, though it's generic (talking about looking at equipment, when this is an FRN for phone service). It's funny that they ask to observe students using the service; there is a paucity of students in August, and they aren't allowed to make phone calls anyway. I wonder how many Potemkin villages they see.
The only item in the letter that seems vague is "evidence of E-Rate document retention." What does that mean? The only guidance on document retention comes from the FCC's Fifth Report & Order (starting in Paragraph 45), which gives all kinds of "illustrative" examples, but the FCC admits "we do not believe that an exhaustive list of such documents is possible." So no one can tell you all the documents you'll need, but you're required to have them.
So my first task: create a checklist of everything they might want to see. I'll start with the letter from BearingPoint and the Fifth Report & Order, and add anything else I can think of. I'll post it here when it's done.
I found an actual checklist of records to be maintained. As usual, I found it while looking for something else. There is also a page of recommended recordkeeping practices.
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