Update on PIA Inquiries:
The PIA inquiry process is evolving. This article discusses the two basic aspects of PIA review as currently implemented within EPC. Stay tuned for future changes.
Finding PIA Inquiries:
One early and welcome change in the PIA process is the way in which an applicant is notified of pending inquiries. The initial email notification system, as discussed in our previous newsletter, was to direct the applicant to the News tab within EPC to find the inquiry notice, then to use that EPC notice to link to the actual inquiries. As one applicant put it, this process of finding application questions had all the characteristics of a scavenger hunt.
A new PIA inquiry email process, following an EPC upgrade last Monday night, is much better. Most importantly, as shown below, emails now provide a direct EPC link to the questions.

Note: Some applicants are reporting receiving similar looking PIA emails, but not finding any “Pending Inquiries” when clicking on the link. This appears to be occurring further into the review process when the reviewer accepts an application modification, and the system generates an automatic, but unspecified, “confirmation.”
Responding to PIA Inquiries:
Finding a PIA inquiry is one thing. Responding to it is another, as last week’s experiences demonstrated.
The first problem is not being able to easily contact a reviewer to clarify questions or to even understand the basic response process itself. The text of the email invites the applicant to contact the reviewer “via EPC” if there are any questions regarding the inquiry. That’s not easy — at least at present — because there is no mechanism within EPC to contact a specific reviewer. As an alternative, applicants should try calling or emailing.
- Reviewers in some cases (as in the example above) provide their telephone numbers.
- The instructions indicate “Do not respond to this e-mail.” That is because the email is generated from USAC’s email portal address, not directly from the reviewer. Often, the reviewer’s email address is appended to the reviewer’s name on the first line. If not, the reviewer’s email address almost always is in the format: first name, period, last name, @sl.universalservice.org.
A second problem is that responses to individual questions are constrained by simple, often “Yes/No,” menus. Currently, there are no textual comment fields. If an explanation is required, we suggest typing it into a text file and uploading the file (an option provided for most questions).
A third problem arises if there is more than one question. There is currently no way to respond separately to multiple questions. If you’re working on questions progressively, use the “Save and Share” feature along the way. Do NOT use the “Submit” button until you’re ready to respond to all questions. “Submit” will send both completed and blank answers to the reviewer.
We’ll discuss other aspects of PIA responses in future newsletters.
Customizing Your News Feed:
Users of the EPC “News” feed may have noticed that there are just too many news items being displayed. To make the “News” feature more useful, it’s time for a little spring cleaning.
The key point to understand is that there are different categories of news. As a new EPC account holder, the EPC system automatically subscribes you to all categories of news. This is dangerous because it means that you may not notice important correspondence such as Receipt Acknowledgement Letters (RALs”) and PIA inquiry notices amongst all the clutter. Decluttering is vital to your success (and sanity).
There are two basic approaches to customizing your own “News” feed.
The quickest fix is to find a news article that is not relevant to you, and unsubscribe from the entire category. Many applicants, for example, find RFP postings to be useless. There is a trick to getting rid of this category, as shown in the example below.

Just at the tip of the green arrow, there is a little orange box with a white “X” inside. Most of the time, it’s invisible. It becomes visible only when your mouse hovers over the upper right-hand corner of the news item in question. Clicking this “X-out” box allows you to unsubscribe from that news category. As a check, EPC will ask you to confirm that you intend to remove this category from your “News”.

The second approach to decluttering your “News” feed is to set it up category-by-category. You can block certain categories, or you can request to see all or only personalized news items in selected categories. To do this, pull down the menu next to your name in the upper right-hand corner of your screen, select “Settings,” then “News.”

This will bring up a menu of available “News” feeds. Under each category, there is an option to “Unsubscribe.” If, for a given category, you’ve already unsubscribed, the option line changes to allow you to re-subscribe to either “All” or “Personalized” news in that category.
