Procrastinators rejoice!

Well, the SLD has extended the window by one day, so we have until 11:59 tomorrow to file. I didn't think the site crashes were that severe, but we're dealing with a kinder, gentler E-Rate now.

How badly do people procrastinate? Well, now that the word is out that we have until tomorrow, the site is no longer slow. I'm thinking everyone decided to file tomorrow.

Back from the dead

Well, that didn't last too long. And now the site seems to be peppier than before.

California E-Raters wake early

I was counting on having until 11:00 this morning before the SLD Web site bogged down again, but here it is 10:00 a.m., and it looks like the site has gone belly-up. What time do you people in those western time zones get to work, anyway?

Now when I click on "Apply Online" from the SLD main page, I get an HTTP 500 error, which is the SLD server saying "UNCLE"! The Data Retrieval Tool is also offline.

If this keeps up, there will be much wailing from procrastinators. But I guess if it keeps up for the rest of the day, procrastinators will be rewarded with a blanket extension to file.

Maybe I'll get a cup of tea, put my feet up and browse old News Briefs.

She'll not take much more o' this, Capt'n!

If only Scotty could get to work on the SLD Web site. Last year, I had no problems posting 471s at any time right up to the deadline. This year, everything is quite sluggish, and today I'm even hitting some timeouts. I noticed some slowdown on Friday, but today it's been slow enough that I've had some timeouts. Woe to the last-minute filers showing up tomorrow.

I'm also getting several crashes a day. Part of that is that I'm not being so careful. Last year I would only run one Internet Explorer window, and I surfed very gingerly. This year I'm confident that a crash will only lose me one screen of information, so I'm doing lots of other things while I wait for pages to load.

And it looks to me, just from looking at the numbers assigned to my apps that hundreds of applications are being filed every hour, so it's not surprising to find things sluggish.

Conspiracy theory: one time I heard Mel Blackwell talking about getting people to file a little earlier, rather than wait for the end of the window. Perhaps this year's slowdown will encourage people to file earlier. Perhaps by not having a ton of computer horsepower laying around idle waiting for the last week of the window, the SLD has stopped rewarding the procrastinators. But I don't buy that. First, Mel is all about customer service, and second, if there are widespread slowdowns and crashes, it's going to create an unpleasant mess, which SLD will have to clean up, without getting any more funding to do so.

It's January, do you know where your 486 is?

So the new "hey, dummy, you forgot to file a 486" notices have started coming out. I like them. Here are some reasons:

1. Pink envelopes. Love the color-coding.
2. Across the top of the page: "Urgent reminder: Your Form 486 may be late." Yes! The old SLD would have said something like "Form 486 Non-Timeliness Notification" or something. This page grabs you and tells you exactly what's up. OK, it should be in a larger font and not in all caps, but it's still progress.
3. Two pages. That's downright pithy for an SLD document. It should be one page, but again, it's progress.
4. The SLD implemented the FCC order just the way I expected. I'm always amazed at how differently the SLD looks at the FCC's orders. But in this case, this letter is just what I thought the FCC had in mind.

It's also pretty well written, though it gets a little mushy in the 3rd paragraph, which should be the hammer. It says "USAC may reduce your commitment...if your SSD is adjusted." It should say: "Get this form in by 2/15/07, or half your funding is gone, poof!"

E-Rate me

I was just thinking:
The money I pay to my tax preparer is tax-deductible. So why aren't E-Rate consultant fees eligible for E-Rate? Just wondering.

SLD no haberdasher

It seems that the SLD is not doing so well selling HATS. For those of you that don't know, this is the SLD's new outreach campaign, where reviewers come out and try to help applicants which have had trouble getting funding. A wonderful idea.

But at the last board meeting, apparently Mel Blackwell mentioned that about 40% of applicants contacted don't want the help, because they're afraid that it's actually an audit. Now why would that be? Could it be because the HATS visits are conducted by BearingPoint, which also runs the Extended Outreach Site Visits? Both SLD and BearingPoint tooks pains to declare that EOSVs were not audits, but one component of the EOSVs was an investigation of compliance. That's an audit. So now the SLD is sending out BearingPoint again, and again saying it's not an audit, and for some reason, applicants are dubious. Keep in mind that to be considered for the program, the applicants have to have gotten repeatedly burned by the E-Rate program.

If I were an applicant, I wouldn't be eager for a HATS visit, either, for two reasons:

1. I don't always get the right answers from the SLD (though this is constantly approving), so now I'm going to trust the advice of some consultants hired by the SLD who have never worked in a school district or filed an application?
2. The premise of the HATS program seems to be that certain applicants run into a problem when applying, and if we can fix that problem, they'll get funded every year. In my experience, applicants don't make the same mistake twice. Applicants that get denied year after year run into a new problem every year, because there are so many rules in this program, and they are scattered in so many places, and most of them are secret. HATSpeople will have to anticipate next year's error(s).

I do this full time, I spend probably 10 hours a week keeping up on rules and rule changes and rule interpretations, and every time I hit the "Submit" button, I still worry that I'll get tripped up by something stupid. So I'm not sanguine about the ability of BearingPoint employees to anticipate applicants' errors. Still, I suppose any help is better than none.

If the SLD wants to sell HATS, they should use On-Tech's slogan: E-Rate Funding - Guaranteed. Get the FCC FCC to pay someone (preferably not a company that also does audits) to come in and assist the applicant, and then guarantee that the applicant will receive full funding that year for all requests. (Except Priority Two for low-discount applicants, of course.) Applicants would be clamoring to get in.

Don't get me wrong; I think that the HATS program is a positive development. I'm just not surprised that applicants don't want in.