New tool (well, new to me)

I wonder how long that tool's been hiding in plain sight in a quiet corner of EPC?

OK, you're in EPC, what's the most useless menu in the top navbar? If you answered "all of them," you're not far off. "News" is pretty useless because you get a wide mishmash of stuff. "Tasks" and "Records" I use all the time. The last one, "Actions," doesn't have any actions I want to do (though the "Related Actions" link in the lower row of links can be useful).

That leaves the "Report" link, which is even more useless than "Actions" and "News." The only reason I ever use it is to navigate back to My Consultant Landing Page, but I almost never do that. Today I accidentally clicked on "Report" while trying to get to the "Records" page. I'm not sure what made me glance up at the first report today, but I saw "Invoice Line Summary Status" and I was intrigued. At first, it looked like a lot of search tools: a clumsy way to search for info that you can get more easily somewhere else (usually OpenData), but I discovered a reason that I'll be back to this tool.

If I put in an "Invoice Line Number" and click "Apply Filters" then scroll down, I get a one-line result. It looked useless until I scrolled all the way to the right and noticed the "Customer Billed Date" field. That's going to save me some work. See, if I get a Service Certification request, it gives me the invoice line number, but not the billed date. If it's a ServCert for a phone bill, how am I supposed to guess which month it's for? I had to write to the service provider and ask them, and that can be a frustrating experience.

But now I'll just take the invoice line number and head over to my friend the Invoice Line Summary Status report, put in the invoice line number et voila, I get the billed month. 

A tool useful for a very narrow circumstance, but quite useful in that circumstance.

What other useful tools lurk unnoticed in EPC? 

Thank you for your contribution

The latest Contribution Factor (for the second quarter of 2026) is out: 37.0%. Nothing surprising, but at least it's lower than the high-water mark we hit in November. But I haven't heard any rumblings from Congress lately about fixed the revenue base for the USF, which has me worried that Congress won't do anything.

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.