 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am Krista Burns, your host at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the Library Commission's weekly online event that we do. We cover library commission activities, any Nebraska library topics that may be of interest to librarians or staff across the state. We have sessions presented by commission staff and we do bring in guest speakers. These sessions are done every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time and we do record them. So if you are not available, able to see one of our live sessions, you are able to listen to it on a recording. This morning, I am going to be presenting so we do not have any other speakers or guests on e-rate. This is a new part of my job here at the Library Commission, something new that I've taken on this year. So we have a session today on some of the basics of the system of e-rate, what it's all about to try and get people up to speed on how they can use it, how you guys can use it for your libraries. So here's just a brief overview agenda of what we're going to go through today. I'm going to go through the basics of the program, how it's from, where it came from, that kind of thing, eligibility, what kind of things you can get e-rate for, and discounts, technology planning that you do have to do for some of the things depending on what you are applying for, and just some other issues, some of the applications, the forms that you do. And just some other, just as we go through it, some issues that you might need to be aware of or want to be aware of throughout the, as you're applying for and doing all the, everything that needs to be done to participate in e-rate. So here's the basics of how e-rate got started, what is it all about. The FCC is the government agency that oversees the e-rate program. They're the ones in charge of it. They set the rules and the policies. They, you know, the laws that are put into the code of the federal regulations, handed down as, here's what you can do, here's what you can't do, here's what all the rules are for it. They have a, the Universal Service Administrative Company, USAC, is the company that has contracted, the FCC contracted with to actually administer the e-rate program. They also administer other programs that are for getting funding to low income areas, those kind of things as well. And e-rate is one of the four programs that they administer. And the specific division of USAC that handles schools and libraries is the Schools and Libraries Division, SLD. And that's who handles all of the e-rate for schools and libraries, and that's who, I guess if I had another bullet here, there would be a fourth bullet, that would be me, here at the Library Commission. Each state across the country has some sort of person who is their e-rate coordinator, who works with the Schools and Libraries Division of USAC to keep everyone in the state on track with what they're doing and make sure you get everything you need to done. Now, e-rate funding is done on a, by year, so every year you have to redo some forms. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don't, we'll go through that as we go through the session. Their funding year goes from July 1st through June 30th, so the upcoming funding year for 2010 starts next July. But right now is when you would be starting to complete forms for next year's funding year. The e-rate program was created in 1996 by the 1996 Telecommunications Act, where $2.25 billion each year comes in from interstate phone revenues that are used to give libraries and schools, as you saw from before, refunds on some of their costs for telecommunications, telephone service, and internet access. They can roll over. Sometimes there are unused funds. As it says here, some libraries and schools don't get all the money that they apply for, or it's just not all asked for that is available in that $2.25 billion. And so sometimes they can roll over unused funds to give more funding out to libraries and schools. Now, today we're going to kind of focus more on libraries because that's what I handle here at the Library Commission. But just so you're aware, it's also available to schools, and that is all handled by whole different people here in the state. So as I said, schools and school districts can apply for it, libraries and library systems. And if you are in a consortia, they sometimes band together to get telephone service or internet access. And as a consortia, you'd also be available to have the whole consortia apply for e-rate. Now, what about the discounts? What can you get? It will vary depending on some statistics. Anywhere from 20% to 90% of your cost can possibly be refunded or paid back to you through the e-rate program. And this depends on the basis these percentages on the National School Lunch Program to start with. So for school it would be whatever the percentage of students that are eligible to participate in the program. Now, this is not the number of students that actually participate. You may have more students eligible than actually apply for it. So it's the number of students that are eligible. And for you as a library it would be whatever school district you're in. That's the numbers you would use for that school district. You also take that in conjunction with whether or not you are designated as an urban or rural for the location of your library. Now, how do you know these things? There is information is all out there for you to look up these numbers and figure it out. The School Lunch Program data for Nebraska is available on the Department of Education website. So you can go there and I've given you the link here. Don't worry about trying to write down all these links and things. Actually, I should probably tell you that at the beginning. All of these links and URLs that are in here will be put up when the recording is posted to the library commission's delicious account. So you'll be able to get all the links from there. But this is just a quicky reference. You'll also be able to print out this PowerPoint presentation. But we do have the, I've given you the URL to get right to the Department of Education website. And as you can see, if you look at the very end of that URL, the specific, there's a spreadsheet, an Excel spreadsheet that has the lunch counts for all of the school districts in the state. And they have just put, I'm not sure exactly when, but I looked and they do have their 2010 statistics up. So you'll be able to go there and find out what is the percentage of students in your school district that are eligible for the School Lunch Program. Then also on the website for the USAC people, they have a information about whether you are rural or urban area. So you just go there. You'll look up your county. It's arranged by state. You look up Nebraska and then you'll see a list of counties. And that will be where you'll find that information. Once you have those two numbers, then there is a chart that you go to using those two numbers to figure out how much of a discount you will be eligible for. Matrix is online at that URL I gave you. But I've also got it right here as well, as you can see what we're talking about. So you'll have to find out first what percent of students are eligible students for the School Lunch Program in your area. Figure that out. And then if you're urban or rural, and that will let you know how much of a discount you may be eligible for. Now what can you apply for? What exactly can you get money for? There are two different levels of services that they have broken everything out into. Priority one and priority two is what they call them. Priority one is funded first with that 2.25 billion that is available. And then after those areas, those are funded, if there's money left over still, then they would go to priority two services. Being the ones that the neediest applicants first, meaning the ones that are available need 90% from that discount matrix. So we're going to talk mainly today just about priority one, the basic services that you'd start with. We can get into other things in a later session if you have questions, but that's what we're going to talk about mainly today. There are two different priority one services, telecommunication services and internet access. You can apply for one or the other or both. You do not have to apply for both internet and telecommunications. That will be your phone. Your phone access that you have in the library. Local, long distance, anything that has to do with getting telephones access to your staff in the library. The internet access is your basic access to the internet. If your library has internet in some way, shape, or form, that would be that. Now, as I said, some people have thought of e-rate as, oh, well, it's for your internet. Well, and they don't realize it's also just for telephone as well. So keep that in mind if you don't have internet or you don't want to comply with some of the rules that have to do with internet access, applying for e-rate for internet access, which I'll get to later. You can just apply for monies for your phone access and save a little money there as well. Now, priority two is other things beyond your basic phone service and your basic internet access. Internal connections, maintenance of these connections, your wiring, that kind of things, routers and servers and stuff. That would be priority two funding. That would be a, as I said, if there's a man left over and if people are applying and asking for that, that's where that would come from. Now, what exactly are we talking about when we're talking about telecommunications, internet access, those priority two ones? Every year, the FCC publishes a new eligible services list. So for whatever year you're applying for, you have to make sure you look at the correct list to see what is eligible this year. This is the kind of thing that they update and make changes to and adjustments to over every year because there's new things coming out. Obviously, as you know, new technologies out there, new ways of getting internet and phone, and they've always got questions about things that are always tweaking every year. So this is the list you would go to to find out exactly what is eligible and what is it. If it's on this list, it's eligible. If you can't find it anywhere on this list, you have to assume it's just not something that you can apply for e-rate funding for. And it is available on the website. You go to that URL there and you'll get the whole list. I believe I just looked at it yesterday. They've got both the 2009 and 2010 lists up there right now. The process for doing e-rate can go over multiple, you know, it takes, you're doing working on different years at the same time. So they still have the 2009 numbers up there for people who are processing their forms yet for that. So just make sure if you're applying for new e-rate for the upcoming fiscal year for 2010 that you use the 2010 eligible services list. But you will find it right there on that URL. Now all this stuff that you're going to be using, the eligible services list information, your discount from the discount matrix there, all this is used to fill out the various forms that you have to fill out throughout the process of applying for e-rate. Now there are four basic forms for applying for the service. All of them can be done online. Previously there were paper forms and I do believe paper forms are still out there if you do want to access them. However, everything can be submitted online now. You can go to the paper forms and print them out, you know, maybe get a heads up on what kind of questions they'll be asking. But you can also, if you print them out online, they really encourage libraries to do this. It makes things go through your processes a lot quicker, you know, to wait for things to be mailed that you're sending to them. You know it's been sent, you've got confirmations, e-mail online confirmations that everything's been processed. So it's a much easier system. And also I'm new to e-rate just this year, but I have heard that in the past it has been very painful using the different old forms in paper that people had to do. And then from what I've heard from people who have done it using these online forms, there's still a lot of information. There's still a lot of questions, but it's a lot easier than it used to be. So possibly if you were wary of doing e-rate from a previous experience years ago, try it now and see. And you might find it easier than what you had experienced in the past. Now the four basic forms that you start out with is your 470 is your first one where you're telling both the e-rate people, I want to have some sort of service phone or internet and I want to be reimbursed for part of the cost. After you do that, you will get bids come in and we'll go through that process. Then you'll have 471 that you'll submit saying I've chosen a service provider from all the companies that bid on me based on my information of what service I was looking for in the 470. Then after you've signed your contract and your service has actually started, your subscription year has started, whatever it is, you notify them using the 486 that you have started receiving the service. This is a form that for some reason a lot of people forget to do. It's basically just saying, yep, it's good to go, we've started. So 46 sometimes from libraries, it gets lost in the shuffle. And then also at the very end, very important form, your 472 or 474, and I'll get into the difference between those two, the two different ways of where you can tell them I've paid my bills and now I want my rebate, my refund, my e-rate, monies. So those are very important. If you don't do those, you don't get your money back. All of these online forms are available on the USAC website. That's the Universal Service Company there. So you can go there. That's the main page where you'll have online access to all of those four forms. There's also instructions on there, which is really nice. They have the forms themselves and then separate step-by-step instructions that you can use to follow along and figure out what you need to fill in. What I've been looking at them, it kind of reminds me of doing your tax forms, that you have a certain number of pages that the actual are your tax forms that you fill out and then twice as many or three times as many pages explaining how to fill out your tax forms. Same kind of thing here. You've got your instructions and you've got your forms and if between the two of them you follow, just go step-by-step through them. You should be good to go. Now you do need to keep track copies of all of your paperwork and what you've done. Sometimes audits are done. Sometimes they come back and ask more questions about things. So you need to keep, from whenever you started, five years after the last date of service, the last time you had service with a company providing you either with your phone or your internet access. So you'll want to have files set up for this, possibly binders, because there's going to be a lot of paperwork going back and forth and back and forth between you and the E-rate people. So something to keep yourself organized with all the forms and for each year of the forms. You will be dealing with multiple years and at a different stage in each step in each year and so you want to keep those separate so you know this is all of my forms and all my paperwork for the 2008. These are all in this binder or in this file. These are all the ones for my 2009 in this file. Here's all the forms where I'm at now getting started with 2010. So keep them separated out that way. But make sure you keep five years going back from wherever you started. Now here is a list, a chart. Now you don't have to try and read all this, know all this. Now we're going to go through each of these step-by-step. But this is a nice little chart for reference for you of all the deadlines and dates of the process. What the funding year is, what the forms are, what kind of things you get back from the ESAC, the SLD, the School and Library Division of ESAC, what things will happen and at which times. So this is just a chart in this, but we're now going to go through each of these steps. So I'm not going to read it off of this here, but this is just a good thing that you might want to have as your own reference for what's happening when and what should happen next after you fill out a form. This is a good chart for that. Now I mentioned each of the years that there are for the forms and that every time you file a form they send you some sort of letter, a confirmation letter, you can see actually if I go back here, after you file your form 470 they send you a receipt acknowledgement letter. After you file your form 471 you get a receipt notification letter. Every time you send them something they send you something back telling you they got it, some sort of thing. And then you have a chance to make any changes, clarifications, make sure everything's correct. You'll also get a funding commitment decision letter letting you know what kind of money you're getting. So you'll get a form for a six notification letter letting you know that they've received that form for getting your money. So all these things you'll have to give a getting each year. And let's see here. What they have done in the beginning they didn't do much about it, but they realized this is going to get very confusing as libraries are doing multiple years at the same time. Every year is color coded with three different colors and they just use them in a rotating system. So canary, yellow, pink, and blue are the three colors that they use. And each year, as you can see here, I've got out what color each year is. So this is another way to keep track of what's going on. When you get stuff from them, from USAC, from the Schools and Libraries Division about your e-rate, it'll be in a whatever color applies to that year. So this will be a good way to figure out what is this letter they're sending me for, which years it applied to, so what do I need to go look at? So right now the ones that we are getting, if you're doing it at the moment for 2009, are all coming in yellow, the canary color. When the 2010 letters start coming, they'll be coming in pink. So that'll be the next color they'll be using. So now we're going to get any questions so far on the basics of the system, of the program, how it works, what's it all about, if anybody needs any clarification on anything at the moment. Okay, then I will go on. The next thing we have, I'm going to go through the actual steps of applying for the e-rate from the beginning and on through... Oh, we do have a question here, sorry, I didn't wait long enough for the typing to go through. Angela, as we already have an internet provider, is there a way to skip steps? No, you'll be able to skip steps, just be able to do it differently because you already have someone. Ideally, the reason you would need to fill out a new form is, at some point, obviously, your account, your subscription is up and you have to renew that kind of thing or it's a monthly subscription, so every month it's actually a new one. So you'd still have to apply for something for a current one that you have to get all the information to the SLD people and so they know who it is that you're working with and that you now want to be working with this internet service provider and getting an e-rate for it. Now, once you already have one, then it does make it easier every year because most likely that'll be the same one you'll stick with. I mean, you'll get bids, possibly, but your same one will probably still be the one that you would go with most likely, unless some other company comes into town and this suddenly is so much cheaper and better. But you will have to go through the basic steps still, yes. Basically, it's just getting you and that ISP on the radar of the USAC people. So there are seven basic steps in doing e-rate throughout the whole process of a year and we're going to go through each one of them one by one here. The first thing you need to do, there it goes, possibly, now this is actually the first step would be, it would depend on what you are applying for, is do some technology planning, write a technology plan. Now, you only need a technology plan if you are applying for e-rate for your internet access. If you are only applying for e-rate for basic telephone service, telecommunications, your phone, long distance, that kind of stuff, and not for your internet, you do not need a technology plan. So this first step actually is only applying to people who are kind for internet. So be very aware of that. You have it, there are five basic elements that the e-rate people, SLD requires you to have in a technology plan. Then this is something you may be doing anyways or have thought about doing or in the process of doing for other things that you do at your library and it's always a good idea to have one anyways, technology plans that you know what kind of things you need in the library, where your computers are at as far as needing new ones or updating them, what have you done in the past, how are you going to keep up with things in the future, all that kind of stuff. It's always a good idea to have a technology plan in general. And if you already have one, then you are already done with step one. You can just say here, this is the one that we have been using, now I want it to be used for the e-rate. And they do have their own five criteria that have to be in the plan. Generally speaking, if you've written a pretty good one, you probably have mentioned other stuff anywhere, but this is the kind of thing that you've got to check off one, two, three, four, five, and make sure you've covered all these areas. Goals and strategies for using the technology in your library, basically why do we have it? What is it good for our patrons and our services? Keeping staff up to date and trained on it, on the technology that you have. Doing an assessment on a regular basis needs assessment of what we've got, what do we need, how's it going, making sure you have the budget to keep up with the technology as it changes over time in the future. And an evaluation, going back and looking at these plans, having a little delay with my PowerPoint of advancing for some reason. Anyway, here's the specific write-ups right from the SLD's criteria, exactly what they talk about as what they mean for goals and strategies and all the different areas that I just talked about. So this is their exact wording from their website, so you have this as a reference for when you're working on your plan. I also have here the link to their website where they have a little more description of it, basically what was on that previous slide to their SLD's five criteria. Now, to help you out as well here at the commission, we have had for quite a few years a technology planning worksheet that our library development people have put up that you can use basically just a fill-in-the-blank worksheet for doing a technology plan. And I've given you the URL for that right there. It'll have everything that you need to put in that covers the E-rate, but also anything that you use other technology plans for as well for LSTA funding or just doing it in your own library, this can be used. And the worksheet that we have is really nice. On the basic information, it has explanations of the different sections too. So here where the SLD says goals and strategies for using telecommunications and information technology to improve library services. Okay, well what does that mean? On our worksheet we have not just the heading of that, but a description and some examples of what would this mean? What do we mean by goals and strategies? So it's got a little kind of like a built-in into the worksheet instructions on what you need to be putting in to answer these different questions and to fill in these different blanks. So I definitely strongly recommend it. We have a lot of libraries that do this that use their worksheet on our website and just fill in the blanks and then it works for everything. These technology plans, once you have created them, you send them to me. You used to send them to Richard Miller. He is the E-rate coordinator here before me. He's still at the commission. He just does not do the E-rate anymore. You send your plan to me and then I would look over it and evaluate it and approve it or send it back to you and say well this needs to be a little more, that needs to be changed or whatever, letting you know what it is. Now also the plan has to be approved by me in order for E-rate to accept it as your technology plan that you're using to apply for the E-rate for internet access. So that is what you'll have to send to me here. And then also as with the other forms, you said keep copies of it and the approval letter that I would send you. I send you all either try and email it as often as I can. But if I can't do that, I can email you an actual approval letter that is my signature and I said yes, this is the approved plan. It's got everything it needs. Now as far as when you write this form, now you may already have one and you're good, that's great. If you don't have one, it does need to be, now this is something that you need to, there's a slight difference here. You must have it written, some sort of creation date and draft form, the basics of it started before you file your 470, that's your very first form saying I want to apply for E-rate. It has to be written before you do that. Now this is also all, don't forget technology planning only applies if you're doing internet access, if you want to apply for E-rate for internet. If you just want to apply for E-rate for telephone, you can ignore all this technology planning section of the session. But if you're doing internet, you have to have it written before you file the 470. It does not have to be approved by me though, you just have to have it written, have a date on it that says this was created on whatever date and make sure it's a date that's before the date that you submit your 470. Now the whole point of it also is to support the services that you're requesting on the 470, so make sure that they match up that what your technology plan says is also the kind of things and services that you say you want to get when you do fill out the 470. You can write a new one every year, but you also can write them up to cover up to three years, which is actually really good. You don't have to rewrite it every single year, but three years is the maximum that you can write it for. So you can say this technology plan covers us from 2008, 2009, 2010. Great. It has to cover those funding years. It has to cover through the end of the funding year that you're applying to for. So you have to make sure that the form is dated saying this technology plan covers us through July 30th, 2011, because that's the end of the 2010 year for E-rate. So make sure it covers all the years that you are doing it for. But it can be multiple years. So if you do one that's multiple years, you do not need to redo it every single year to me. It's done once. It covers three years. Then three years later, you've got to do a new one. Now it has to be approved by July 1st before you can submit your 46th saying that you're receiving your services. So you have time from when you write it. You can start filling out your 470. You can submit your 470. You can submit your 471 saying we've picked our service provider and you can still be in the midst of tweaking the technology plan if that is still necessary. But it definitely has to be started before that very first step of doing the E-rate process before the 470. But we have time to go back and forth with it to make it fit right before it actually needs to be approved by me. Oh, I'm sorry. There was another question that I missed earlier. Hold on. Sorry. There you go. I believe it said can you, I think I, it disappeared on me. I believe, Janet, you had asked if you can go back and get reimbursement for previous years. You have to have filled out the forms for previous years. You can't go back and say, oh, we had internet access back in 2005. We want E-rate for that. No, there are deadlines for each year for each of these forms. So you have to have been in doing the process during the time for that fiscal year, for that year. So you can't go back and backdate things. There's no grandfathering in saying, we've had this internet service provider for five years and now we want rebates for all those years. No, you have to do it based on the year that you start submitting the forms, the 470. Now, there will be some possible appeals that have to happen back and forth. And after you start filling out these forms and sometimes they use taxes, well, we're only going to give you this much of what you requested and all of it and you can appeal it. And there could be back and forth that could take a couple of years to get done, but that we would have still had to have filled out the forms originally for that year. All of this would have to be done at the original dates. Does that answer your question? I hope. Now, one other thing that you do have to be aware of and this is something that some libraries have heard of and know about is the SIPA Compliance of Children's Internet Protection Act. If you are applying for e-rate for internet access, you do have to comply with SIPA. It requires having a filtering software of some sort on your computers and having an internet safety plan for how you would deal with this kind of thing if it happened. The software has to be on the computers, has to be installed, has to be away also for staff at your library to turn off the filtering software and people do need to use it unfiltered. Adults, anyone doing research on things that might be caught by the filtering software, that kind of thing. So that is part of the thing you can do. You do have the ability to turn it off. That is part of the SIPA. But if you are applying for internet access, e-rate for internet, you do have to comply with it. If you are applying for e-rate for just telephone, just your telecommunications, your local young distance, you do not have to comply with SIPA. It has nothing to do with talking on the phone. It has to do with going on the computers, going on the internet. Now you can have apply for telephone, e-rate for telephone and have internet access at your library and just not apply for e-rate for the internet access and that is fine. You do not have to have any filters on those computers. If you are just, all that USAC cares about is what you are applying for. If you are applying for telephone, that is all they look at, that is all they care about. They care that you have got a computer without a filter on it. If you are not applying to get money back from them for internet access. So I know there have been some people that have been confused by this and that people have been saying that, oh, e-rate is all about got to have that compliance on it so I am not going to do it at all. That is not true. Only if you are applying for internet. So you could say if you are with some libraries, I know they do not want to have filters. They have issues with that. It is too much to deal with. Don't apply for e-rate for internet access and you are fine. Just apply for it to get some of your phone costs back and it still will benefit you in some way. However, if you do want to get it back for e-rate for internet access, you will have to comply with it. There is information on the website for exactly what they mean by it, what it has to be done, how it has to be handled. And like I said, it is not saying you have to have everything filtered to block everything end of story. If you do read and look closely at the Internet Protection Act, it does have built in there that yes, it has to be on the computers, but also there has to be a way for staff to turn off the filtering for people that need to get past it for doing, depending on whatever they are doing research on. So keep that in mind when you are thinking about it. So that is step one, your technology plan. And like I said, it only applies for internet access. If you are only applying for telecommunications, your telephone, you get to skip step one. Step two would be filling out and submitting your form 470 where you are saying I want e-rate and I want someone to provide me with these services. And what you are actually doing is opening a competitive bidding process, putting out an RFP basically letting service providers, telephone, or internet, depending on what you are doing. No, you are interested in getting service. So when you fill out the 470, these companies can go and look and see what 470 has been posted and then contact you to say here we will provide the service for you. What you would want to do on this form it is basically where you can say exactly what you need. Is it just for the library? Is it for a group of libraries? We have a bunch of branches, it is for the whole system. Is it just for phone, just for local? Is it for local and long distance? Do we have voicemail? Whatever, that is all you put in there. Let me know. What do we need at our library? Now, you also have some timing that you need to think about when you are submitting your 470 because it relates to submitting your next form, your 471. There is timing that you have to know of. There has to be enough time for vendors, ISP, telephone companies to see your 470 and then to submit to you. Here are our bids and for you to look at them and decide who you might go with. Before you can choose a vendor, you have to give a good enough amount of time for that to happen. According to them they want it to be 28 days before you do your next form 471. You have to make sure that you time it, that you do your 470 and then you wait 28 days before you choose your vendor and officially fill out your 471. Now, there is a deadline for submitting the 471 as well which affects when the last day that you could submit your 470. 471, the deadline to submit that this year is February 11th. I'm guessing it's in a future slide. Yeah. Based on that date, you have to back up and see, okay, what's the latest time I can possibly submit my 470 and still have those 28 days available for bids to come in and for me to evaluate them. And that is January 14th is the last day that you can post your 470 and still have those 28 days before you have to post your 471. Now, all this stuff could be done before these dates as well. These are the deadlines. Right now we've already got libraries doing their 470s have submitted them and they're out there and they're thinking already about when doing the 471 because they've already had them out for a long time. And actually it's a good idea to try and do them as yearly as possible if you can. The later it goes, there's going to be more people doing it and there's going to be always every year at the last week there's a huge rush of libraries trying to get them in and then maybe delays of things getting processed and you don't want that. It's also good just to get it done and over with and know that you've gotten it taken care of. But there are the deadlines to keep track of to make sure if you don't get your 470 before January 14th you can't do e-rate for the next year at all for the 2010 year because it's already too late. You won't have the 28 days available to you for the bidding process. Now, for telephone service it says here you do have to fill out your 470 every single year to redo that one. For Internet Access you may have multi-year contracts and you have multi-year technology plans so you don't have to do a 470 every year necessarily so it's going to depend on how long your contract is that you've made with your vendors. Also, when you're looking at this price has to be your primary factor in selecting a company if you do get multiple bits. Now some of you if you already got some when you work with them maybe the only one that conducts you and you just wait there to when you go with or you may only have one company that Dale handles it for you but you do have to have that your primary factor in selecting who it is. It's the idea to get the cheapest that you can. Now, you file a 470 if you have no contract for the services that you want or a contract is going to expire that you currently have before June of next year. So that may help answer some of your questions there, Angela, about if you have a current provider it may depend on when your contract falls that you'd need to be filing a new one. And as I just said, if you have a multi-year contract you can file one 470 that covers all the years of the contract and you don't have to refile the 470. You would have to do a 471 each time and just refer back to your original 470. You'll have a code number assigned to that one. Just some acronyms that go along with these. I'm going to have to speed up a little bit here. Your build entity number is an ID number assigned to your school. So you will have that will be assigned to you that you'll use on all these forms. Also a PIN will be assigned to the person who is doing the application. As soon as you fill out your first form you'll be assigned a PIN number that will be used every time and this is used as your electronic signature. After you submit your 470 you'll get a RNL, your receipt notification letter letting you know that they got the form and summarizing what you would put into the 470 and this lets you make any changes if there's anything was incorrect on it. And then also they will refer to the ACD, the Available Vendor contract date. This is that 28 days after the form for 70 is posted that we talked about earlier. Now after you've submitted the 470 that's when the competitive bidding process starts. It may or may not be very competitive depending on your situation and what's available for you, your services in your area. But as I said earlier they have the information from the 470 they can go look it up on the SLD website and then they will contact you saying hey we can provide the service for you. To make sure it's open and fair process that's part of the 28 days giving everyone a chance to get a bid into you and for you to have a chance to evaluate the bids. So that's how it makes it open if you're having that time limit. And also using your cost effectiveness cost has to be the primary factor in choosing which bid you do. Which vendor, which company you do go with. Keep track of everything you're doing as you go through this process because you may have someone from SLD come back and ask you later on how come you picked this one why, what was the decision making process. Try and document everything you do, have meetings have board meetings, have stuff written down keep track of that. The bid, obviously there's some acronyms in terms here, a service provider responds to your 470 that's the bid that comes in and as I said the price is a primary factor something you'll hear a lot about as well. Now after you have chosen who you're going to go with that's when you go on to the next step which is the 471. Where you've evaluated the bids then you submit the file of the form 471. And this is when you tell SLD the who you have chosen provide let them know who will actually be receiving the service from this provider use the discount calculation information from that discount matrix that you use the school lunch program and your rural or urban designation will be included in there and then certify that you're complying with all the program roles basically just saying and this is all legal stuff we're talking here to this is legally you're saying yes I follow the rules yes if we're doing internet we've got a internet safety plan we have filters I certify that all of these information is correct that kind of thing and don't forget this has to do with that 28 days which I just went into earlier you have to wait for 28 days to file your 471 after you've found your 470. There is the February 11th date that I remembered before there is an application filing window for a 471 there's a certain block of time when you can submit it at all it opened up December 3rd just earlier just a few weeks ago and it goes through February 11th so you have until then to file your 471 so a lot of these things getting started revolves around this filing window once this is open you know when your 470 has to be done until January 14th date so this is an important thing to know what the application filing window is so you have until February 11th to your 471 and backing up from that you have until January 14th to your 470 we have another question can my reason for who I'm going to be just be that that's what the city county goes with and my library is part of the package deal well if you're part of package deal that would be something you would have to talk to the city and county about and got e-rate for I'm not actually sure how that would how you would pull it out separately because you have to have bills and things that show that someone paid for it because you can have state contracts and things that get applied that do get done through e-rate as well I'd say that's something I'd have to check on because I'm not sure exactly how that would work I know it gets done just don't know off the top of my head if there was some what exactly a special process would be for that I can find out if you want to know more someone is interested in that same email or phone call reminder and I can check on that for you if that is something that you do do you submit your 471 you receive your row this time you receive acknowledgement letter where this gives you information about what was entered in your 471 so every time you submit a form to them to SLD they send you a form by letter back letting you know we got it here's what we think it says and this is where you can take any corrections any changes if you need to to your application after that is all gone back and forth they will evaluate see what they think about it and you will get a funding commitment decision letter this is what tells you how much money you actually are going to get sometimes it's what you applied for sometimes it might not be depends on what they had to what they decided so you know about what monies you will get and then this form is what is this letter from them is what is used to submit your next form your 46 that we'll get to in a second so in this section for 471 you have your funding request number which is assigned to your form 471 a lot of code numbers and things here that you would remember but all of this is referred to in your letters and forms so that your service provider your telecommunication number is your spin number this is an ID number applied to service providers your telecommunications, your telephone provider your internet service provider so you as a library has a bend your number and they have a spin number you can look up these spin numbers on the USAC website however also double check with your provider to make sure it's still correct they sometimes change numbers they change companies and things so just double check with them to make sure your funding request okay item 21 is a very important part of 471 and this is where you actually specifically say the services that you're applying for is what you use that eligibility list eligible services list to specifically say here's exactly what we want here's exactly what it's going to be that we're going to be getting from this company that we picked and the mercy is knowledge letter your row that I talked about we have another question here at what point in the future Angela asks would someone start the e-rate processor 2011 or 2012 each one is there still enough time for 2010 well obviously I just told you that there is enough time for 2010 right now you still have until January 14th to get that 470 if you're just doing telephone access it's just the 470 if you want to apply for internet you've got to have a technology plan written before you do the 470 don't have to have it approved by me yet but at least have it written, have a date on it that says we created this technology plan on whatever date just make sure it's before the date you submit your 470 so you still do have until January 14th to start the process for 2010 and then for each you're following it'll be the same kind of timing in the fall is when you start the process for the next fiscal year of e-rate so the next step is 5 is when you said to review your form set for 71 to see if it's all up to stuff if the schools that you're applying for are actually eligible if the services are eligible they basically double check all your work is what the application review is for they may come back to you to ask for additional information to ask for more clarification for more details you got to make sure you reply to respond to these requests excuse me to make sure that they've got all the correct information sometimes they only give you 15 days to reply to something they will send you letters or emails with this information saying we need more information about that we need more information about this whatever make sure you're on top of those things and respond to them you can also respond to them saying we don't know 15 days isn't enough time can we extend it and have more time to find out the information you need and that's fine at least you get back to them within whatever time frame they said they wanted to hear something from you so they're going to be like I said reviewing anything and everything and as I said earlier can be confused you may be doing multiple years at the same time you'll be working on depending on what stage of the process you're at for each year and having either separate files or separate binders for each year will really help you keep organized and the fact that they send you things in certain colors that'll help you figure out what you have for each year as well those pink yellow and blue letters you get from them you can also appeal things is where you can go through the appeal process you would appeal to the SLD the schools and libraries division of the USAC if they deny it you can go up to the FCC level if you want to they do grant many appeals but it could take some time so this may be something where you pay out the money to your internet or telephone provider and then don't actually get reimbursed until like two years later but eventually you might get it the appeals procedure is on their website you can go there if you do need to do that if something gets denied or you think maybe you should have gotten more than you did our group that at USAC that actually does all of this evaluation is the program integrity assurance that will be contacting you about all of that now after you have gotten through that and everything has been approved and you've gotten your funding commitment decision letter saying here's what we're going to give you and then you get to do your 486 this is though after the services have actually started so you may get your decision letter your funding commitment decision letter and then it's actually three months later or two months later that the contract actually starts you've got to wait until that actually starts and you've actually paid you say yep we've gotten the services it started you'll put on this is and before this is where you have to have that technology plan approved by me before the 486 that's this timing tpa that's technology plan approver that's me so you would need to have that letter that I sent you on hand and say yep it's been approved we have a form now remember technology plan this is just for internet if you're just applying for phone ignore that part also if you're doing internet this is where you'd also be saying yes we comply with this the there is also deadline for this you have to submit your 46 and within 120 days after your service contract your service starts the contract date whatever it is you've got 120 days to submit your 46 or 120 days after the date of the funding commitment decision letter whichever one's later so between those two things you have to figure out and calculate the 120 days oh Laura I see you had said you had to pop out for computer issue no problem yes absolutely we'll have you put in for this I will have you submitted for your CE credits no problem so your form 46 notification letter is issued after you have submitted your 46 so that'll be their response to you in the appropriate color saying yep we got it then the last step is actually invoicing them telling them we've paid our bill and we want our money back now there are two different ways that you can receive your discounts using a bear form which is a 472 or a spy form which is a 474 built entity applicant reimbursement and service provider invoice and the difference between those is the bear form is filed by you after you have paid the service provider your phone company your internet company you've paid them and now you're saying to usac hey we've paid them reimburse you know give us back the money that we applied for that you committed to us the spy form is filled by the service provider after you've been built a non-discounted portion of the cost so basically if you use this spy form you get a bill from your service provider already discounted so you get a discounted bill from them to start with and then they have to get their money back from usac with a bear form the service provider has paid has billed you for the full amount and now you as the library are getting your money back from usac so it depends on how you want to do that it's a local decision you can do it either way and you may just need to work it out with your service provider what they want to do as well depends but you can do either one of those to get the money have the money processed through and there are deadlines for those as well bear form due October 28th it's 120 days after the last service date of the previous year which is June 30th as going by the U8 fiscal year or 120 days after the date of the form 46 notification letter so there's going to be depending on when these letters get sent when you submit forms, when they can do letters may tweak and adjust when your dates are, where your deadlines are for some of these things does sound confusing because this one and also the previous ones the 20 to 120 days would depend on two different things really nice thing on the website for the SLD they actually have a place where you can go and check dates you can plug in a number and say actually our service started this time and our form 46 letter came at this time what is our deadline and it will spit out that number for you or that date for you so they've got that really nice they have that on their website and at the end of here I have general links to everything on their website that you can go to so if these kind of deadlines are confusing when it could be based on this it could be based on that just use the calendar thing on their website and it will tell you right off the bat what it is there is the if you submit a bear you'll get a letter back from them telling you that it has been processed and you will receive a report detailing all the invoices whether it's a bear or a spy depending on which one you've done whether you've gotten the money back direct to the library or you've got or the internet or your service provider has gotten the money back you'll have a report of that that you can just letting you know what's been done and take a look at this report and make sure it's being done right compare it to the forms you filled out compare it to the invoices you submitted to USAC because there may sometimes be a discrepancy or there may be errors or something every time you get a letter back from them a notification letter, a report a receipt letter double check it, compare it to what you submitted make sure things got done correctly or make sure if something has been changed they may have decided well I'm not going to do this, this wasn't really an eligible service whatever look at these letters and compare them to your previous things and see if they match up and if they don't and you can't find there's no explanation on there contact them and find out what's up they'll have contact information on the letters there's contact information on the website you'll be able to contact them and question why there's a difference if there isn't something on there now as I said you can contact them um the USAC SLD people their help desk is called the client service bureau so this is like their customer support their custom area they have an 800 number that's right there that you can call anytime with any questions you have and they have an online email form that you can fill out if you go to that URL it'll give you a form where you submit whatever your question or problem is and then they would email back to you in response so either way you can call them with any questions that you have um if you're having issues with things now of course you can also call me too here in Nebraska I am your e-rate coordinator for the state so if you want to do a local thing first you call me and see if I can answer your question or help you out that's perfectly fine sometimes depending on the question the problem it might need to be bumped up to them to the client service bureau if it's not something I can find out or I can fix or change for you we might just have to bump it up to them um but it's up to you if you want to call me that's fine too either way we're both available for you and then there's the general website URL for the USAC website Janet has a question many deadlines do you have a list where I can print and check off as I go actually yes were you peeking at my slides there is actually a that's on the next slide here a couple of different things that you can use to keep track of what's going on here on this on the left side the final link there's a flow chart that is a chart of everything that you need to do it's more of a graphical thing showing what form you submit what letter they send back to you what form your service provider might submit for doing their billings and whatnot so you're back and forth the whole process so you can figure out where you are in the process also you can use let me go back to it where to go this chart for the forms and deadlines chart this is something else you can use to help keep track too it's a nice quick list of when things happened this specifically also be aware of this because I'm doing this right now the dates on here are the dates for the current fiscal year January 14th deadline February 11th deadline every year those dates will be different every year they issue just because of timing and when they do things so you can't say that every year it's February 11th it's going to vary it'll be sometime in February probably but it won't always be this is specific for this current upcoming funding year of 2010 but this will give you the basics of it and also that flow chart if you go to that on the website that's a really nice one I actually use that myself a lot of where you are in the process this flow chart is nice it gives you what you're doing and what your service provider may be doing just so you know what they've got to be keeping track of as well and that's kind of nice to know also Genesis no I did not look ahead that's okay you just led into the next slide nicely now also other useful things on their website they do these news briefs every week or so and they have them all posted on their website just up to date information things have changed when deadlines are the schools and libraries news briefs definitely take a look for that at that and you can sign up to receive them through email to you yourself I have signed up for them in my email so you don't have to go there every time they send one you'll automatically get an email to you if you want to doing those news briefs very very useful information coming directly from the SLD people also they've set up some nice tip sheets a whole list of PDFs that just give you tips, tricks, instructions why do I want to do this, how do I do this on that one website so on anything any step you can think of to do for the service for the process you'll find a tip sheet there on how to do a technology plan and why do I want to do a plan what's this part of this form or that form basically some kind of a frequently asked questions thing but tip sheets of all the what you want to be aware of and also just explore that whole SLD website the main URL here usac.org there's a lot of useful information on there there's PowerPoint slides, there's video tutorials there's the those seven steps I went through, they've got them all laid out there as well with all the description and instruction on what you're supposed to be doing at each step you can it's a great website this is how I've been teaching myself how to do e-rake like I said I'm new to it this year and I'm trying to learn it just as anyone else who's new to it and they have all the steps laid out there really nicely on their website there's a lot of information just focus in on the things you need and you'll get the help you need from there as well and of course you can always contact me with questions as I said I am your e-rake coordinator now for Nebraska and I can help answer any questions you may have or find out what the answer is if I don't know it off the top of my head so that is the end of my presentation a very quick overview of the basics of e-rate of how it works the different forms you fill out the different steps you take anybody have any final other questions that they want to ask for those of you that have microphones I will unmute you I had done that a couple times earlier anybody have any other questions you can talk or you can type into our questions section I can answer them for you here before we wrap up I know it was a lot of information to absorb it is a very complex process but I think if you just follow the steps and do each one one at a time you can make your way through it this powerpoint presentation will be posted up on our website with the when the recording goes up of the session the links will all be linked from that as well so you will be able to jump quickly to all these URLs that I have listed in the powerpoint and of course like I said give me a call, any questions, any confusion if you want to know when you are supposed to be doing something anything else anybody needs any questions you want any comments okay well then thank you very much for attending I hope you will join us next week our Encompass Live will be on discount shopping with the Nebraska Library Commission any discounts you can get by purchasing databases, services supplies, conference things whatever through the commission we have a lot of those that we do and Susan Nisley here at the commission will be giving you an overview of all those different ways you can save money on a lot of your library needs so I hope you join us for that next Wednesday so thank you very much for attending bye bye