 Hello, I am Krista Burns, the State Erate Coordinator at the Nebraska Library Commission. In this video, I am going to show you how to complete and submit the Erate Form 470, the first form in the Erate Process. This is a new version of the form just updated and released in December 2013. To begin, go to the USAC School and Libraries webpage. The URL is usac.org forward slash sl and in the menu on the left-hand side of the page under resources and tools, we choose the first option, apply online. This will bring you to the page where you can apply, submit all of the Erate Forms that you need to do all online. A couple of things to be aware of before you get started. Internet Explorer is the only browser that you can use to submit your forms online. Other browsers, it is the only one that is tested with the forms and they are programmed for it. Other browsers will cause problems, errors, you'll have issues working with the forms, and if you think you have submitted it, in reality, you most likely have not. So, in order to submit Erate Forms online, i.e. is the browser you must use. Another thing to be aware of is allowing pop-ups. In your browser, allow pop-ups to don't have them blocked, turn off your pop-up blocker. There will be warnings and instructional guides and help things that will pop up within all of the Erate Forms letting you know various information, so you will need to have that allowed. If you don't do it ahead of time, that's fine. The first time a pop-up comes up, it will let you know that something has been blocked and that Internet Explorer will take you through being able to allow pop-ups specifically for the USAC web pages. So, to get started with our Form 470, over here on the left, the very first button, the blue button, is Erate Form 470. We click on that, and the first thing you need to do is look up your build entity, look up your library or your institution. You can do this either by zip code or by entity number. If you're not sure what your entity number, you can do a zip code search, and it will bring up a list of all of the build entities that USAC has aware of that have your same zip code, and you can choose the one that is yours. If you do have your build entity number, you can just enter that. To find out what your build entity number is, you can look on a previous Erate Form. If you have applied for Erate in previous years, it will be listed on those forms. There is also an option on the USAC website to do a search for build entity number, so you can look up your library and see what the number is. And you still aren't sure what it is and can't find it. You can contact the Schools and Libraries Division Client Service Bureau at their 800 number, 888-203-8100, and they can either look it up for you or if you don't have one at all, they can assign one to you. We're going to type in the build entity number that we know for our library. And so it was the only one that we knew the entity number. It only gave us one option here, so that is us. We choose Next. And this is the first pop-up that will come up. I want you to double-check the information in Block 1, your address and phone number information. This is information that USAC has already in their system based on your build entity number. So you need to double-check and make sure it's the information right down here that's grayed out right now, address and phone number, and fax number. If it's correct, great. You can go on and continue working on your form. If it's not correct and needs to be changed, you will need to contact the Client Service Bureau at their 800 number and let them know so they can update the information. And then once that information is correct, then you can go on and start a new form for our 70. We'll just click OK to get rid of that. The first thing to do in your form is to create a form identifier. This is a number that you can use to identify this specific form for this year. It's just a reference number. You make up whatever number you want. USAC, if they need to contact you for more information about this form, they will reference that number when they reach out to you so you know which form for 70 they are talking about, contacting you about. Next thing you do is choose the funding year. It will have the most upcoming funding year on here. So this is funding year 2014. Our address information is correct. Now we got to tell them what kind of application we're doing. We are a, we're going to do this as a public library. So we choose library as 5A and public under 5B. 5C is where we enter how many eligible entities are we looking for service for. In this case, we're just a single library. So just one. If you were in a consortium or a library with multiple blanches, you'd put how many of those there are. Next, we put down our contact person name who is in charge of submitting this form. And the contact person information address and phone number information goes down below. If that information is the same as the library's address and phone number, they've got this handy button right here that can copy that and pop it right down into the, into the boxes there. The last thing we do have to enter is our email address for our contact person. And you'll see just as it is common in most online forums nowadays, you have to enter your email address twice so they can confirm that you typed it incorrectly. And you also need to choose your preferred mode of contact. If USAC does need to contact you with more information, to ask for more information with questions, clarifications, what's the best way to reach you? You can choose telephone number, fax number, or email address. And we're going to choose email address for this one. The final item on this first page is consultant information. There are companies and or individuals out there who can help you do your e-rate form. They will, you'll pay them to either submit it in complete and submit it for you or they will give you advice and assistance. If you have contracted and paid someone to help you out with it, you would enter their registration number here. They are required to register with USAC to be an official legal consultant for this. If you haven't used one, you just leave that blank and go on to the next page. The next screen is where once you've entered your basic information, it assigns your form 470. It's a specific application number. You'll either want to write down this number or I recommend just print out the screen. You will be able, you need that number to get back into this application again if you get pulled away and you can't complete the form, this form when you're right here right now. You'll use that number to get in and to continue your complete form, picking up where you're left off and continuing on with the rest of the application. So print this out so you have that application number handy. Then click next to go on to the next page where we now tell what kind of service we are looking for, what services do we want to receive an e-rate discount on. There are three different categories of service that we can choose from here. Priority 1 services, which is your basic phone and internet services, basic telephone, local long distance, internet service provider, and then internal connections and basic maintenance of those internal connections. Internal connections are if you have construction done or a wiring put in or upgrading a computer lab that you have, that would be your internal connections. And then basic maintenance is the ongoing service or repair or upkeep of those connections. We're going to do for this example just Priority 1 services, so we check the box for that where it's going to do a basic phone and internet and choose next. And you can see here it specifies, it just tells you now that you've gone on that this is written reference Priority 1 services, cover telecommunications and or internet access. The first thing I ask for is if you are going to be releasing a RFP, Request for Proposal. For e-rate purposes, RFPs are not required. You only need to do one of those if that is something that your local city library, your local city or municipality requires. If it does not, you'd be able to check, no, I do not have one and I don't intend on releasing one. And then you tell them what kind of services you're looking for. And we're going to put some basic local, our local phone service wired. And you do want to tell whether that you want wired or wireless or cell phone so they know what kind of service you're looking for. We're going to say the library has three phone lines and put in our long distance as well. Those same three lines, we have long distance. Oops. And then we also have a fax number, so we'll put in a fax line. We have one fax line. And then also our internet service. And specifically we're looking for DSL. That's the kind of service we can receive. Now for the quantity or capacity for the internet service, you need to put in what speed that you want to have your internet service at. So how fast you want it to be. And you want it to be as broad and open as you can with this, not limiting it to only a certain speed. If you're currently receiving a certain number of megabytes per second, that's fine. But you want to be able to open in case you have other options when you finally hear from different service providers. So we're going to put a minimum here. We want at least five megabytes per second in our internet service. And then if you receive anything five or above, you'll be able to work with those service providers to get your service. So once we have all that entered, we do next. And this is where you can give some more information if necessary. If there is a specific technical service person or a person who they should be contacting any service providers for more information, you'd enter that information here. If the person who's your main contact, which in our cases are library director Jane, you don't need to enter that in here. And then number 13 is if there's any local, state or local procurement requirements for looking for services. If you do have them, you would check the first box and explain what they are in the text section down here. We're going to say no, we don't have any specific requirements that our state imposes upon us. And on to our next form page. Now it brings us back to that menu where we started with choosing what kind of service we wanted in case we forgot to do internal connections or basic maintenance. We could add them in now at this time if we wanted to. We're not going to, we're going to stick with our basic phone and internet and go on to the next part of the form. Here's where we list who the recipients of the service will be. Once again, you can search by zip code or entity number. We'll put in our entity number here. If you had, as I said, branches that you wanted to list, you need to list all of them or a part of a consortium. This is where you'd list all of those different individual entities. But we're just going to put in our build entity number, search for it. It comes up in the left-hand box here as our, who we are, and we highlight that by clicking on it. Add it to the build entities list on the right-hand side. And then click next at the bottom of the page. And then it just confirms, yep, this is who you are looking for. Hit next again. Now here's where we start our certification and signature, certifying all the legal use of the form and signing it. The first choice on here is telling them if you are a school or a library. So if you're a school, you choose A, 16A. We are a library, so we are choosing 16B. Number 17 is if you need to submit a technology plan or not. We, technology plans are only required if you're doing it non-Priority One services. So those internal connections and basic maintenance of them. If you're doing just priority One services, the phone and internet, like we are, a technology plan is not required. So for our purpose, we would choose the second box here. If you were doing internal connections or basic maintenance, you'd choose the first box. And the rest of these certifications are the legal certifying. I'm certifying that you will have your 470 available for 28 days before you make your choice of service provider and go on to the second form in the E-rate process. Certify that you'll retain all the documents for at least five years. You need to keep everything, any forms, any applications that you receive for five years after the date of service that you certify that you know that there will be other things that you need to pay for besides the E-rate app of eligible services that you will cover those. You certify that this is, we'll only get the E-rate service if we actually get these, the E-rate discount is we get these services if we receive them from a service provider. You say you are the authorized person allowed to be submitting this form, that you review all the FCC requirements, that everyone will think here is legal, and all the FCC rules have been followed as well. Then you enter the information for the authorized person submitting this form. So this is our library director. So we're going to say her title is, and then we enter the address information for where our library is located, oops, there we go, in DC, in our phone number, in our fax number, and then enter the email address again here, and then who is our employer? And we're going to say this is Townsville's public library, and then we scroll to the bottom to go on to the next page. Now we've clicked all of our certifications and entered our contact person's information. And now this page is where you have entered everything for the form, and you still need to, a final step is to actually submit the form and then submit the certification. At this point you can do a print preview of the form, definitely want to do that. At the bottom of the screen here has a print, gray print preview button that will bring up your application in a new window, where you can go through and look over it and verify that all of the information is correct. You just scroll through it and make sure you've got all the application and applicant information, the services you're looking for is all correct, all of your certifications are checked off correctly, and all this information is correct. So use your browser to print out this so you have a copy of your full form for your own records. And then to actually submit the form you need to click the green, this bright fluorescent green submit button at the bottom of the page. Then on the next page we have a choice of submitting our certification either electronically or in paper. If you are submitting this e-rate form for the very first time, you've never done e-rate before, you need to do a paper certification. Once you submit a form of any of the e-rate forms in paper and they actually have your physical, your actual signature written out on file, then USAC will issue you a PIN number that you can then use to do all your future submissions and certifications electronically. So you have to figure out do I already have a PIN number or not. If I don't, do a paper certification. And if you need, you will need to print this out and actually mail it in. So paper certification comes up here, and when it goes over to it you'll see that it has all of the items that we checked previously are all marked on here. And here is the post section, the area we would type, sign the form and date it. You scroll down to, and this is where you would mail the form to the addresses at the bottom of the form. We recommend that you use the return receipt request from the post office. So when you do bring it in, request one of those, it'll give you a little, it'll be a green postcard. That means that when it is received at USAC, at their offices, they will have to sign the form and send it back to you, and then you have proof that they did receive your form. So do, if you're doing paper certification, do return receipt, send it to this address in Lawrence, Kansas to submit it. So you would print out this page, stick it in the envelope, mail it to there, and then click the done button. If you do have a pin number, if you have already done a previous form and you've been issued a pin number to use, you can do an electronic certification. After you do your first paper certification, they will send you a little postcard in the mail, a little piece of paper that has your pin number on it. If you have that, you can do electronic certification instead. You click that button, and it brings up the same thing as you saw in the paper one. All the boxes checked that you had previously done. And here is where you can actually enter your pin number onto the form, and the date is automatically entered for you there. Enter that. Beneath that, you have to check the box to confirm your compliance. This is saying that, yes, I agree that this pin number does serve as my electronic signature in making this form all legal and submitted. And then scroll all the way to the bottom. Until you click this done button, this small little button at the bottom here, you have not actually certified the forms. You have to make sure you click the green button to submit the form, and then the done button at the bottom here to submit your certification. Once you do that, a box will pop up telling you that the form has been successfully certified, and your ID number is so-and-so. And then you can print this page for your records. You will also receive an email generated from the system to the email address you put on the form as the contact person, telling you that confirming that the form has been received. We'll click OK here, and you'll see now on this page where we had previously typed in our certification number, we now have the ID number. So print out this page to go along with the page when you've printed out the form, and you'll have your form, a paper copy of your form for your records, and a copy of your certification for your records all ready to go. And with that, you are done submitting your form for E-rate form for $470.