Thanks to SHLB, I got the Bidding Portal Report and Order that I posted about on Saturday. So let's take a look, shall we? Today's post will only look at the competitive bidding portal. We'll talk streamlining tomorrow.
First issue: timing. Requiring use of the portal starting in FY 2028 seemed reasonable, until I realized that meant applicants would start using it in July 2027. That's too soon. Why not use FY 2028 as a beta test, and go live in FY 2029? Rushing the portal out the door is going to make it kludgy, especially in the first couple of years. I mean, the Commission has taken nine years to respond to the IG's suggestion that they collect all bids, so what's another two or three years? I think it's going to take a year just making sure the portal's process doesn't violate any state or local procurement rules.
Next, the portal requirements: "(1) prospective service providers to respond to applicants’ FCC Forms 470 by submitting their bids into the USAC-managed portal; and (2) applicants to upload their bid evaluation and vendor selection documentation, including contract(s), after selecting their service provider(s)."
The first requirement will save applicants from having to send bids in later if they go into a Selective Review, but the second requirement will require applicants to upload documents that normally only need to be uploaded in case of a Selective Review. So in total, these requirements do not simplify the application process. It's nice that applicants no longer need to keep copies of those documents for 10 years, since USAC will have all those documents already, but it's easier to keep local copies.
The FCC posits that "a competitive bidding portal will help ensure a more fair and open competitive bidding process by increasing visibility and transparency into bidding information received during the E-Rate competitive bidding process...." But since the FCC "we will treat bids and other pricing data submitted to the bidding portal as presumptively confidential and will not make the non-winning bids and submitted pricing data routinely available for public inspection," the process is only transparent to USAC and the FCC, so I don't see it making the process much more open and fair. Unless USAC is going to hire more selective reviewers to go through all the information.
The FCC claims that "this increased transparency will give USAC and the Commission direct and instant insight into the competitive bidding process to reduce opportunities for potential bid collusion and the submission of sham or altered bids...." USAC and the Commission currently have easy access to all that information and more through Selective Reviews. Are they going to increase the number of Selective Reviews? If not, I don't see how they're going to catch collusion, etc. Again, they need to give applicants and especially service providers access to the bids, etc. Service providers have a strong incentive to check up on any bids they lost, and alert USAC to any irregularities. Of course, service providers would have no incentive to show restraint in alerting USAC to possible irregularities, so I predict an explosion of Selective Reviews, most of them pointless.
Check out footnotes 75 to 78 to see the E-Rate heavy hitters who think this portal is unlikely to reduce fraud, and will create an administrative burden. To see who's in favor of the bid portal, check out footnote ... uh .... Did any commenters think this was a good idea? The IG and GAO said "the Commission’s ability to detect and deter fraud has historically been limited by its lack of direct access to underlying competitive bidding documentation...," but there's no specifics on how collecting all that info is going to help, instead of just collecting info on cases that USAC intends to investigate. As Socrates might have said: Unexamined information is not worth collecting.
The FCC finds no problem with complying with state and local laws and using the portal. If state law requires a hard copy of the bid, perhaps notarized, or some kind of bidder's security, they can just submit that in addition to what gets submitted to the portal. But service providers who are required by state law to submit paper bids can just ignore the E-Rate portal; the applicant will be forced to award the contract based on the paper bids, and will have to forego E-Rate funding, since there's no corresponding bid in the portal. The Commission says that in such cases, applicants can request a waiver. And if the Commission doesn't grant the waiver promptly, the applicant is out of luck.
I like the idea of all questions going through the portal; we waste a lot of time fending of service providers who say they have a question, but are really just looking for an opportunity to work their sales magic. Walkthroughs and bidders' conferences will still be allowed. There may be unforeseen problems here, but it seems to me that this won't be a problem in most cases.
Uh oh. "We also direct that access to the competitive bidding portal and repository be limited to the applicant’s Account Administrator and up to two other authorized users (including consultants)...." If the Account Administrator changes, will the new one automatically get access? What about the other two users? Can they be changed? This restriction is going to create headaches for applicants and especially for consultants.
That's all for now.
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