USAC issued a Special Edition News Brief on October 20, 2015, outlining a number of enhancements to the EPC portal. The most important changes are reviewed below.
New Full and Partial Rights Capabilities:
Applicant EPC users with full or partial rights can now manage an important subset of organizational data — addresses, entity attributes, and student data (for schools and districts) — that previously could be updated only by the Account Administrator. The inability to make these changes had been a major stumbling block for day-to-day E-rate personnel, including applicant consultants. Other EPC account features, such as managing (or even seeing) the list of users, remain under the sole purview of the Account Administrator. Users with view-only rights have no account management capabilities.
View-Only Rights for State E-rate Coordinators:
USAC has given State E-rate Coordinators view-only access to EPC account information for public schools (including charter schools) and libraries within their respective states. State coordinators were notified of this change last week, but need to establish passwords before they can view state applicant accounts. At that point, the coordinators’ names will appear in the EPC account user lists.
View-only access is designed to permit the coordinators to assist their schools and libraries with the basic aspects of the EPC system. Note that view-only rights are limited. View-only does not mean view-everything. Perhaps most importantly, for those applicants seeking assistance from a state coordinator, view-only users cannot see forms being drafted. E-rate forms become available to view-only users after they have been submitted. An applicant needing more help can individually upgrade a state coordinator’s EPC rights to full or partial.
USAC is not providing EPC access to state coordinators for non-public school EPC accounts. If an individual private school seeks state coordination assistance within EPC, it may proactively add a coordinator as an account user.
Form 470 Display and Tracking:
The EPC display view of a completed Form 470 has been upgraded to show the Allowable Contract Date (“ACD”) — the end of the minimum 28-day waiting period after the Form 470 has been submitted and posted. ACDs will show on all Form 470s filed after October 9th, and will also show on the associated PDF versions.
Users can keep track of information subsequently uploaded to a specific Form 470, such as an RFP amendment or Q&A, by clicking the “Follow” button on the Form 470 display.
Form 470s displayed outside of EPC, using the View an FCC Form 470 (FY2016) search tool, still do not show ACDs, but at least show the Form 470 posting dates (from which the ACDs can be calculated). The non-EPC bulk Download 470 Information tool for FY 2016 shows neither the posting dates nor the ACDs.