E-rate is not an easy program — nor should it be.
This article is partly an editorial and partly a description of the new complications wrought by USAC’s new online E-rate portal system, the E-rate Productivity Center (“EPC,” pronounced “Epic”), at least in its current early-stage implementation. The article is also designed to serve as a warning to applicants, service providers, and consultants who have not yet created and interlinked their EPC accounts — of which perhaps only 25% or less have done so — that these accounts need to be established before any meaningful E-rate work can be done for FY 2016.
E-rate, like any federal funding program, cannot and should not operate solely on the basis of a school or library asking “Please give me some money,” and USAC responding “Sure; here it is.” Controls are needed to ensure that the beneficiaries are funded as needed without “waste, fraud, and abuse.”
Unchecked, however, bureaucratic controls tend to multiply, making programs more and more complex. To their credit, USAC and the FCC acknowledge that E-rate should be simplified. Unfortunately, there are other factors at work. For the most part, recent efforts to simplify the E-rate program have been of the “one step forward, two steps back” nature.
Before examining the new problems raised by the EPC portal, let’s take a look back at several factors contributing to E-rate complexity.
One factor is that many E-rate rules and procedures appear to be grounded on two misleading premises, namely:
- That the typical applicant is relatively small, perhaps no more than an individual library or a school district with a couple of elementary schools, a middle school, and a high school. Numerically, by applicant count, this premise is not misplaced. But procedures designed for these types of applicants quickly become burdensome for library systems, large city school districts, and regional or state consortia.
- That those responsible for E-rate within a school or library have the time, resources, and experience to successfully complete the process as if E-rate was a large part of their job description. To the contrary, except for the largest applicants, E-rate is anything but a full-time job. In the applicant community, much of the real expertise can be found among:
- Education Service Agencies (“ESAs”) and library systems helping individual applicants through the E-rate process and/or handling procurement and applications through consortia.
- State E-rate Coordinators in many states doing training on a larger scale than USAC, working 1:1 with applicants on specific problems, and helping USAC validate applicant data.
- Private consultants working with applicants (and sometimes service providers) of all sizes. At this point, consultants are involved with close to 50% of the number of applicants and 60% of the funding.
A second complicating factor has been the relatively recent emphasis on tracking the impact of E-rate. Although understandable and necessary, this effort requires a lot of data. The burden of collecting that data, and making it more “transparent,” has fallen on the applicants. One result, seen earlier this year, was the significant amount of Item 21 data required in the revised Form 471 for FY 2015. Another example, just now becoming apparent, is the level of detail that will now be required in the revised Form 470 for FY 2016.
A third factor has been the long-growing focus within the rules — and the enforcement of those rules — on a fully competitive procurement process. Rules affecting pre-bid planning, bidding, and gifting have been enacted that, in many cases, exceed both state and federal procurement practices. Applicant fear of funding denial and/or funding recovery only adds to both the perceived and real complexity of E-rate.
One longstanding proposal to simplify E-rate has been the creation of a portal to serve as a central repository of applicant data, an electronic channel for E-rate correspondence, and a streamlined process for submitting forms. With USAC’s new EPC system, portal proposers are now getting a version of what they wished for, but much work remains to be done.
The primary concern at the moment is that the EPC portal is making life difficult for the three advisory groups discussed above which can best provide support for many smaller and less experienced applicants. Broadly defined in portal terms, these groups are, or may need to become, “consultants.” USAC, for example, has not yet determined how to provide access to applicant portals for State E-rate Coordinators. Most likely, these state coordinators will be required to have portal accounts as consultants. Similarly, ESAs, working individually with member applicants, may need consultant accounts (often in addition to consortium applicant accounts).
For these groups in general, the EPC system presents two major problems.
- Both the Access Agreement and the system itself prohibit the use of Internet robots to collect portal data. This means that access to portal data cannot be automated. For example, state coordinators cannot determine which applicants in their states have or have not yet created their EPC portals without searching the list of applicants manually.
- Much of the information required to set up an applicant portal — including the list of people authorized to access the portal, entity and NSLP information, etc. — can only be provided and maintained by the account’s Administrator, who cannot be a consultant. This means that a consultant, be it a private consultant or an ESA, cannot do much of the support work that is normally provided.
Resolution of these two problems is apparently some time off. Computerized access to aggregated portal data, although authorized on an account-by-account basis, will require a system and policy change, or the creation of separate non-portal based databases (one example is the new FY 2016 Form 470 search tools discussed in last week’s News Brief). Broader access to the Administrator’s portal rights is not expected for some time. In the meantime, much of the work of setting up and maintaining EPC portal accounts will fall to the individual applicants — a clear anti-advisor/consultant bias.