News of the Week

FY 2019:

USAC released Wave 58 for FY 2019 on Thursday, May 7th. Two large applicants were funded for a total of $32.3 million. Cumulative commitments through May 7th are $2.30 billion.

FY 2020:

The Form 471 application window for FY 2020 closed on Wednesday, April 29th. USAC’s preliminary estimate of demand indicates that 38,207 applications (up 6.5% from last year) were received within the window with requests for $2.91 billion (up only 0.4% from FY 2019).

Wave 1 totaling $681 million was released on Saturday, May 9th.

CDW-G BEAR Processing Update:

Applicants awaiting BEAR payments on CDW-G products began receiving letters from CDW-G last week seeking details on those BEAR invoices. This is an attempt to resolve a longstanding problem that began almost a year ago. Last November, CDW-G acknowledged “pricing errors” that had led to overcharges on applicant bills and subsequent delays in processing invoices submitted to USAC (see our newsletter of November 25th). Last week’s letters included the following statement:

More specifically, the letters requested the following information:

• CDW-G customer invoice number(s)
• Item(s) and quantities invoiced to USAC
• The amount invoiced to USAC for each item or items

Applicants not receiving letters regarding delayed CDW-G BEARs may wish to contact the company by calling either 847-465-6000 or 800-808-4239, following prompts to the Government and Education Sales group, and asking for contact information for their CDW-G account managers.

USAC’s Schools and Libraries News Brief of May 8, 2020 outlines the basic PIA review process. Although this guidance is a bit belated, given that over 20,000 FY 2020 applications have already been funded or are “Wave Ready,” the News Brief provides a nice summary of the three major processing steps:  Initial Review, Final Review, and Quality Assurance.