This article is the fifth in a series of updates on USAC’s new online E-rate portal system, the “E-rate Productivity Center” or “EPC” (pronounced “Epic”). The EPC portal will ultimately be used for all electronic E-rate news, contacts, and filings. Most immediately, EPC must be used by all applicants seeking to file Form 470s for FY 2016. It is important, therefore, for applicants (and their consultants, if applicable) to get their EPC accounts established as early as possible in the FY 2016 application cycle.
The EPC system is still under development. There are changes — and/or new things we’re learning — weekly. This week’s update is as follows:
- Early users, who established their EPC accounts in June, have begun receiving email notices warning them that their initial passwords will be expiring within 7 days and will have to be reset. An annoying, but apparently inherent, characteristic of the new system is that individual passwords must be changed every 60 days. Those not involved with E-rate on a day-to-day basis, who are registered as users primarily for informational purposes and/or who are likely to access the system only occasionally to certify forms, may find that they have to reset their passwords almost every time they log in.
Passwords must be eight characters or more in length, including at least one upper and lower case letter, a number, and a special character. The system may limit the reuse of passwords. Our suggestion is to develop a password format beginning with the required character types and ending with a numeric suffix (perhaps a 4-digit date) that can be changed each time. One unintended consequence of the 60-day reset requirement but not a best practice — is that many EPC users may start taping their current passwords to their monitors.
- We suspect that roughly 75% of all applicants have yet to establish their EPC accounts — a situation that will hopefully begin to change for the better when schools are back in session. Last week, as a part of an outreach program, USAC sent emails to a number of E-rate consultants seeking assistance in identifying and contacting prospective account administrators for clients who did not provide valid email addresses.
- One of the nice features of the new EPC system is that it can automatically generate email reminders for users. Applicants who filed Form 470s for FY 2016 earlier in July, for example, have begun receiving notices that the Allowable Contract Dates (“ACDs”) for those forms have been reached. The notices:
- Indicate that the applicants may now close their competitive bidding processes (unless otherwise required by state and/or local procurement rules).
- Indicate that the next steps are to evaluate the bids received, select the winning providers, and enter into legal binding agreements or sign contracts.
- Provide direct links to the applicable Form 470s.
The direct links to specific Form 470s are particularly useful because one of the worst features of the EPC system (in its current stage of development) is the difficulty of finding specific Form 470s from the general list of filings. As listed in EPC, Form 470s are identified only by the nicknames given by the applicants and by the USAC-assigned Form 470 numbers. To see more useful information, such as applicant name or types of services requested, it is necessary to click on each Form 470 individually. The ACD notifications sent to the applicants are particularly nice because the Form 470s, as displayed in EPC, show only the filing dates, but do not calculate the later 28-day ACDs.
Form 470s for FY 2016 can be accessed outside of the EPC portal, but the process is a bit cumbersome. Individual Form 470s can be viewed via the View an FCC Form 470 (FY2016) tool, again in a list without any easily identifiable designations. Bulk downloads of Form 470 data are also available using the Download 470 Information (FY2016) tool. This produces four ZIP files containing an assortment of Form 470 data, but there are several problems, namely:
- To view the data in any usable format, it is necessary to convert the files from pipe-delimited format into field separated Excel format, then merge the four files.
- The list of Form 470s available is only reasonably current.
- Not all important Form 470 data is included. Of particular importance to potential bidders, for example, the data files show neither the Form 470 filing dates nor the ACDs.
Currently, there are less than 70 Form 470s filed for FY 2016, so the problem is manageable, but the situation will become increasingly problematic as the year goes on.