Do your I2A PDQ

Somebody at USAC deserves a bonus.  This year for the first time (I think), USAC has released a list of all the FRNs for which no Item 21 Attachment has been submitted.  I think this is the kind of targeted outreach that the FCC was talking about in Paragraph 24 of the Bishop Perry Order: telling applicants they've missed a deadline, and giving them a chance to make it right.  Now if they would just take it that one step further and send the warning directly to all the emails on the forms.  Still, it's a great start.

And being a bit of a data geek, I decided to spend a little of this sunny Saturday browsing the data to see if there was anything interesting.

First, how big a problem is this?  How many FRNs are on the list?  I count 13,707.  Is that a lot?  By my unofficial count, there are 135,861 FRNs for FY2013.  So 10% of all FRNs lack Item 21 Attachments.  That's less than I would have expected.

Next, does one state have the most scofflaws?  (I guess the Item 21 Attachment (I2A) deadline is a rule, not a statute, so perhaps we should call them scoffrules.)  I poked around, but I didn't see any real pattern.  Kudos to American Samoa: I2As were filed for all 10 of the FRNs for that territory.

And who filed the last FRN for FY 2013?  Well, I can't tell which was the last submitted, but since they're assigned sequential numbers, I can see which was the last FRN created.  That would be FRN 2552208, a preschool in IL requesting funding in the amount of $3.84.  Somebody needs to do a cost-benefit analysis there.

But back to my praise for USAC.  I hope we'll see more of this kind of thing.  Like maybe getting rid of the pointless "Notification of Form 470 Posted but No Associated Form 471" letters.