 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host Krista Porter here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the Commission's weekly webinar series where we cover a variety of topics that may be of interest to libraries. We broadcast the show live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. Central Time, but if you're unable to join us on Wednesday mornings that's fine. We do record the show as we are doing this morning and if you so you can watch the recording later at any time at your convenience, excuse me, and I will show you at the end of today's show where you can access all of our recordings. Both the live show and the recordings are free and open to anyone to watch so please do share with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, anyone you think may be interested in any of the topics we have on the show. For those of you who might not be from Nebraska, the Nebraska Library Commission is the state agency for libraries similar to your state library. So we provide services and programs to all types of libraries in the state so you will find shows on Encompass Live for all types of libraries. Public, academic, K-12, Corrections Museums, Archives, really anything and everything. Really our only criteria is that something to do with libraries. We do book reviews, interviews, many training sessions, demos of services and products, all sorts of things. We sometimes bring in guest speakers to do presentations for us from across Nebraska, across the country for on anything that they may be doing that's cool that we think we want to share. But we also have Nebraska Library Commission staff to presentations for us and that's what we're doing today. We actually have me presenting, hosting and presenting on today's Encompass Live. And today I am going to be talking about e-rate. And we'll get into what that is. E-rate 101, just the basics. As one of my other duties here at the Nebraska Library Commission, I am the state e-rate coordinator for public libraries in Nebraska. So I provide training, consulting, hand-holding, whatever our public libraries need to apply for and receive e-rate discounts from the federal government. I usually do e-rate trainings, full e-rate workshops, three hours long, later in the fall. And I will be doing those later this year. But I wanted to do something short, kind of intro general overview of it of e-rate right now because the process is open at the moment because the e-rate training that I do is going to be November, December at the earliest. I wait until e-rate does their training and then follow up with my own, with anything else, anything I need to add. We will also be doing some specific training that I'll explain in a little bit later on into the presentation this morning in September, October as well. But since the process is open right now for the upcoming year, I wanted to get just a little something out for people who are just wondering what it's all about, what they can do, how to go through it. As it says here, this is just the basics. We're going to have a very one-hour quick overview of the whole process. We'll not go into a lot of details of every step in a form that you would go through, but just give, want to give, here's the beginning from the beginning of the end of how you go through the process, what an e-rate is and how you go through the process. If you do have any questions, go ahead and type them in. Anything on e-rate, you have questions where I'll answer any questions you have today, no problem. Even if I don't get into specific forms and, you know, step-by-step like that, I will answer any questions or concerns you might have about e-rate right now. And of course, you can contact me anytime with your e-rate questions, but type in at any time in the questions section. All right, so let's get started here. So e-rate, just the basics, I'm going to help you get your library's piece of the e-rate pie. So what is e-rate? E-rate is a federal program. It is not a grant. It isn't a loan. It is a discount program, a federal program through the FCC to ensure that schools and libraries can obtain high-speed internet access at affordable rates and keep students and library patrons connected to broadband by providing a discount on eligible services and equipment. That's quite a mouthful, yes. So e-rate gets you discounts on your monthly internet service and any equipment you may need to purchase to make that internet service work. It is part of the Telecommunications, it came out of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and the first year that libraries and schools could receive e-rate was in 1998. So the program has been around for quite a while. It is the funding that is used to provide these discounts to schools and libraries comes from what's called the universal service fee. This is something you may see on your phone bills, your internet bills, something that says universal service or USF. Sometimes it even says e-rate sometimes. And this is charged to the telecommunications companies and to the customers, you the library or us just general people. And it is put into a big pot of money that is then used so there's an extra fee tax on your service that you pay. And then that money is used to give discounts to the schools and libraries. So it is run by the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission. They oversee the e-rate program. They set the rules and the policies and how everything is done. So every year they give us new rules, possibly new information, changes, updates. There's always changes being made to keep up with technology and new ways schools and libraries can receive internet service, which is why I do training every year on the program because there might be something that changes a little each year. USAC, the Universal Service Administrative Company, is the not-for-profit that was created to do the day-to-day administration of the e-rate program. They also do handle three other programs too. One for rural health care, one for low-income people, and one for high-cost areas. So there's four different programs that USAC handles and e-rate is the one that we're concerned with, which is for schools and libraries. And it has this particular part of USAC is called the Schools and Libraries Program or the Schools and Libraries Division SLD. And that's who handles specifically that part of the discounts. Most of the time you'll hear me talk about USAC this, USAC that. USAC is the one who you will hear from. He will receive emails from and who does most all of the work. E-rate is done on a funding year. You have your fiscal year that may run certain times. E-rate commitments, e-rate discounts are given out on a funding year, which always runs from July 1st of a year to June 30th of the next year. So right now, when you are, we have the process is open right now to apply for funding year 2023, which starts July 1st 2023 next year. Whenever you're applying for e-rate, you're looking to apply for it the next year. Not the current year, not what you're in. This year, you already did last year. You applied for it before. You're always thinking to the future when you are applying for your e-rate discounts, either on your monthly service or any equipment you might need to purchase. And the discounts will be available to you that you'll apply for starting now, some forms you do this fall, some forms you do in the spring, and then your discounts will start going into effect on July 1st or 2023. So this is an annual process. You do have to do e-rate every year. You don't, you can't just apply for it once and be done. That would be nice, but that's not how you have it working. So it is something you just have to do regularly every year, go through the same process to keep maintaining and receiving your discounts. So who can apply for e-rate? All public libraries in Nebraska are eligible for e-rate. The rule from USAC and the FCC is that you must be eligible to receive Library Service Technology Act funds, LSTA. Here in Nebraska, all public libraries are eligible to receive those funds, or are eligible to receive services that we pay for with those funds. So you receive a service from the Library Commission that LSTA funds are used to pay that, then you are eligible. This varies from state to state. So you would have to look in your state to see what your state agency, the Nebraska Library Commission is a state agency for Nebraska. So USAC says you determine who is eligible in your state for public libraries. You would have to check your own state to see how they do it. Our schools and school districts are available are eligible as well, individual school or school district as a whole. And if you have any consortias where groups of libraries got together to purchase internet service or schools, multiple schools, they could apply as a group. Here in Nebraska, as I said, libraries are eligible and schools, I work with public libraries. So I'm going to be speaking to the library side of this specifically. For our schools, there are staff at the Department of Education that handle that. Chris Stubing is a current person and we've got contact information on our website for her. So schools and school districts go through their ESUs, educational service units, and then she helps with them, the applications as well. And then I help all the public libraries. So today I'm going to be mainly speaking to the library side of it. Process is pretty much the same. The basic process is the same for both. So if you happen to be a school or doing something with schools, that's okay that you can still learn something from this, but definitely check in with your ESU or the education for specifics for how you would go through the process. So how much of a discount can your library receive? There's quite a range, you can get anywhere from 20% up to 90% off on your internet and bills. Most of the libraries in Nebraska fall on the 60, 70, 80% range. This most this current year when actually the average was 74% discount. So that's a pretty big chunk of money. This is the first thing I tell libraries to look at before they're deciding to do it. If you've never done a rate before, and you're wondering that something you should do, put the time into, like I said, it is something you have to do every year. And there are multiple forms throughout the year that you have to do. The first thing I say is check and see what is the discount you might be receiving. If you're receiving 60, 70, 80% off, it's probably worth your time and effort to go through the process and keep up with it. And to get that discount on your internet. So how is this discount determined? The discount is based on two different things. The percentage of children that are in the school lunch program, the free and reduced lunch program at the school district in which your library is located. That means wherever your library geographically is that school district that the library sits in. Now you may provide services to children from other school districts just because of where people live. And that's fine. Your service area of the library may cover multiple school districts just because of where the school district lines are. But for e-rate purposes, just what they are using, they need something to determine how much would discount each library should get. They said wherever that school, wherever that library physically sits geographically, that school district you're in that determines the school lunch numbers that you look at. And then they match that up with whether you're in urban or rural location. Most of Nebraska is rural, which is good. You'll see in a slide or two here, you get a slightly higher discount on some things. Urban is major city areas, Lincoln, Omaha, etc. So to calculate your discount, we do have resources so you can look this up yourself. So you don't have to, you know, this isn't a mystery. Luckily for us, our Nebraska Department of Education does post the school lunch numbers every year on their website. And here's a link here for it. I've also got a link on our e-rate website. And I'll mention here while you see this is our first slide with lots of long URLs on it. Don't worry about trying to write down these URLs or copy this down. All of these links are on our e-rate website. And after this workshop, after this show, you all receive a copy of this the PowerPoint presentation as well. So you'll be able to refer back to that and look and find all those links that we have here. So first you go to the Department of Education website and look up your school lunch numbers. There is a spreadsheet and it has all the schools individually, but it has a tab for school district as a whole. Because you do need to look at your whole school district, not just one school in the district. So if you have an elementary, middle, and high school, all those numbers together, and they have a tab that has all that done for you. So you don't have to add them all up yourself. Not every state has this on their website. We're looking at Nebraska that we do. Then you check to see if your urban or rural. There is a link and where you can look that up on the USAC website. And it is based on census data. Right now it's based on the 2010 census. I know we did just do the 2020, but they are still, they haven't updated their system to that yet. So it's just your census data from 2010. And its urban areas are 25,000 population or more. If you're not 25,000 or more, then you're rural. Everything else is rural. So that's your cutoff. If your population is 25,000 or above, you become your listed urban and below 25,000 is rural. And then you'll use the what they call their discount matrix to determine what your discount would be. And there's a link to it on the USAC website, but I also have it here in the slides. I want to look at that. So we first look at the percentage of students eligible for the school lunch program. And then you see whether your urban or rural, how much of a discount you receive on your internet services and bills. And you see this category one and category two, and we'll get into that in a bit. There's two different types of e-rate discount you can receive. But you can see rural gets a slightly higher. But everybody gets 90, 85 percent there for category one and then 85 for category two. So you can see here only having 50 percent of your children in the school lunch program. Just 50 percent can get you 80 percent off of your internet bills. That's pretty huge, I think. So I definitely look at this. This would be a good way to sell this to your library board or your city to you convince them, yes, I should be spending the time to go through this process and get this money or receive this discount. So any questions about your discounts and who's eligible? All right, type into the questions section at any time. So what is e-rateable? I don't know if that's a real word, but that's what I use for this. What is eligible to receive discounts? Every year the FCC publishes what they call their eligible services list, ESL, and we do have a link for that on our page as well, which lists everything that is eligible for the upcoming year. It doesn't change drastically, usually it is, you know, the basics are there, but sometimes as I mentioned earlier, if there's new technologies or a new way to receive internet or new equipment that has become available, they will update the list to make sure that those things are included. It's not a very long thing, 15-20 pages long, maybe the whole document, but I'm going to go into some of the basics of that here. And as I mentioned earlier, there's category one and there's category two services. And the big difference between those is category one is the services getting this high speed internet to your building. So what brings it from the service provider to your building? Once you've got it at the building, then how do you get that internet service to all of your laptops and devices and things? That's category two, providing the service throughout and inside the building. So in this graphic here, you can see this brick here that represents the library's walls. Basically, we're talking category one is outside the library walls. Category two is inside the library walls. That's what you can think of as the difference between them. So anything that gets you into the building and then once you're in the building, modems, routers, servers, switches, this list is not exhaustive. Wireless access points, anything that gets the internet service working once it's inside the building. Cables, cabling, all the wiring that you need to do. All of that physical equipment is category two. And both of those things, category one, the actual service itself and category two, all this equipment inside the building, you can receive e-rate discounts on. Now, the devices themselves that use the internet service, that is not what e-rate is all about. E-rate is not about getting your cheap laptops or PCs or discounts on any of that. Anything wireless. E-rate is about the service, the internet service. What brings the service to your building and what makes it work once it's inside your building. So some specifics. Category one is basically anything that gets high speed broadband internet to your building. It could be a cable modem, DSL, fiber, satellite services, wireless that brings it to your building, anything and everything. And this isn't even an extensive list of all the ways. Just some of them more popular ones. So whatever brings it to your library building. Now, there's a special case of category one called special construction. Up until now I've just said it's, excuse me, category one is about the service that comes to your building. And that's true. It's a service that's already just out there. You just need to turn it on. But you may need to have construction done to make that fiber-serviced work. So specifically for just getting new fiber run to your library or school, you can receive a discount on that construction cost. And this is under category one, because this is about getting that fiber connection to the building. Specifically just for fiber connections and just for brand new ones. Any construction needed, design, project management, everything or law involved with getting that fed to your building. Now, USAC does understand that construction isn't going to necessarily fall just in that funding year of July 1st to June 30th. And you may want, you probably want, that fiber to be turned on as of July 1st, not waiting for the construction to happen. So they do allow you in just this special case to have that construction done as as much as six months before the funding year starts for that particular year. So anytime after January 1st of a year, when you're going to be starting using the fiber in July, that construction can be done. So it can be done ahead of time. So you're ready to go July 1st with your new fiber connection. There is also something, an extra thing that USAC has put into place. This went into effect with some modernization changes back in 2010, a state matching funds being a possibility for special construction. This is something that the FCC created and said if your state will provide some extra funding to help make this special construction happen, E-Rate will match that funding as well. So your special construction, your category one, the cost of your installation is going to be a particular amount and you're going to receive your E-Rate discount on that. So if you have 80% discount, E-Rate will cover 80%, but you're so responsible for another 20% of that. If your state will cover some of that, E-Rate will match whatever the state is going to cover as well. And the reason I mentioned this is because we actually have that in Nebraska. Many other states have been doing this over the years and we have just a couple of years ago, 2021, our Public Service Commission, we worked with them to set this up. It's our Nebraska Special Construction State matching program. NUSF 117 is a specific code number for it. It's from the Nebraska Universal Service Fund. That's what that's the abbreviation for. But the Public Service Commission has budgeted $1 million to use over four years to help schools and libraries that are not now fiber-connected get connected and they will help pay for part of that cost. It started in 2021, so we still have two more years left of this of funding being available. There's a link there that goes to the Public Service Commission website where their application form and everything is. You do have to go through the basic E-Rate program process and then you do state matching in conjunction with that. So you do your first form of the process, you find a provider who can do this construction, who has new fiber that they're running and you pick them and then you go to the Public Service Commission and say, hey, we found someone will do this, will you and then you apply to them to get this state matching funds to help pay for part of the cost. I'll mention right now too that we will be doing some more in-depth, really detailed training workshops about the special construction fiber, fiber special construction later in the fall, we're looking at September, October. So if you are interested in this in your library, if you do not have fiber now and you want to look for more in-depth training coming later in the fall for today, we're just doing a brief overview to let you know that exists. So as I said, you apply for E-Rate, pick your provider, then you go on to the Public Service Commission's website and give them your copy of your form of 470 who you've picked and flood their application for their matching funds. The deadline to do this is December 31st of 2022, so you've got plenty of time to get this done. And about mid-January, the commission will then let you know, they'll email you and say, yes, you've been approved and here's what your matching funds are. And then you can do the second form in your process, your 471, to let USAC know that you've applied for E-Rate, you picked your provider and the state of Nebraska is going to do state matching. Once they know that, they will match whatever the state is going to provide for you. And the state will do, as I said, up to 10% of whatever your, the cost of your full project is. So what does this actually mean in numbers? And this is an example, and I don't know if this is exactly what it would cost. Actually, the cost has been a lot less, but this is a nice round number to work with, just to take a picture in our head. So you've got to receive, you've got a bid from provider that says it'll cost $100,000 to do special construction fiber project, run new fiber to your library, and you have an 80% discount. So E-Rate will cover $80,000 of that. And what's left for the library to cover is $20,000. Our Nebraska Public Service Commission state matching fund will do 10% of the project. So they'll cover another 10% of that $10,000 of that 20. And E-Rate says, oh, since your state is covering 10%, we'll match that. And we'll contribute another $10,000, which makes it completely free to the library. Now, this only works, of course, if you have that nice round numbers and 80% discount, but, and here it is just in math, cost project E-Rate covers 80%, state match 10, E-Rate matching the state match another 10. Now, if your E-Rate discount is less, you will have to pay some part of it. But still, you would get a lot of it covered by this state matching funds. So I highly recommend looking into it. If you don't have fiber yet and you're interested, if you're not sure, if you think there is no fiber available in your community, you may be surprised. We've had libraries who've said, oh, nobody does that here yet. And I said, you know what, do the first form. It's just checking to see what's out there. You're not committing to anything. And you may be surprised that maybe some companies who are doing fiber in your area that you didn't know, or you asking for it, make some think about, oh, someone will do this, and then, and you'll be completely paid, and then we'll have this library or this community getting fiber for us for the future, and we'll make money in the future off that. One of our communities did actually do that. I won't name names because I can't remember off that man. But because of a library last this current year, doing this special fiber construction, the whole community had fiber brought to them because the library initiated this process. And the service provider said, we'll bring fiber to your whole town because this is all all of this hard construction part is being paid all by e-mail. So definitely look into it. Look at our workshops we have coming up for that. So that's all category one. Any questions about category one, the basics of it, the internet services, the internet connections you can have. On to category two. Category two, as I said, is your intern with the color internal connections, all of the equipment and everything inside your building that makes the internet work. So and all that physical stuff, access points, cables, firewalls, switches, routers, racks, this nice little picture here of all of your device, all of your connections and wires on the rack, all of that covered, battery backup, power supplies, any software necessary to run the internet. So if you have network software, upgrades, updates, basic maintenance of these connections as well. So after you get this everything included, you may have to do correct updates to the system, repairs, squirrel may bite through the cable of the hauling and replace. All of that can be covered as well, all under category two. So it's not just putting it in the first place, but putting it in and then maintaining it and keeping it running. Now this is something that can be very intimidating to many libraries. You may see this kind of a clause, you may have something like this picture here in your library and you look at it and say, I have no clue what that is. There's a million wires, a million boxes and things and plugs. What is it all? You may be lucky enough to have an IT person on staff or someone in town, but there is also this great resource, the toward gigabit libraries toolkit, specifically designed for our small libraries, but anyone can use it. It's free. It's open source, the Institute Museum and Library Services provide grant funding for this and has just been updated recently too. And it is a way to do a technology inventory and see what you have. It will take you through step by step asking you very simple, straightforward questions. It's for people who are not IT experts specifically. I have a link to it on our website. Of course, online, you'll have a whole document, you'll just go through and answer all these questions and then it will give you ideas of what you could update where you might be able to improve. Could you set you up with a broadband improvement plan showing, oh, this is the equipment you have, here's what you could upgrade to. So this will definitely help you figure out what category two pieces of equipment you may need. We also have staff here at the library commission that can help you with it as well. Holly Walt is on our IT, in our IT department here and she's involved in these fiber special construction projects and in developing this toolkit. And so if you call Holly Walt, look for her here at the commission and she can also give you advice on that. Now category one and category two work a little differently for receiving your discounts. Category one is pretty straightforward. The item costs this much, you receive this percentage of a discount off on it. For category two, all this equipment, they do it a little differently. They do what they call calculating a budget for you. They basically say, this is how much money we will give you to spend over the next five years. They do fixed five year budgets now. So for every block of five year time, they say, here's how much money your library can use for all this category two equipment that you may be purchasing and all this upgrades and maintenance. You don't have to use it all the first year, you can spread it out throughout all the five years. You can do a big project, maybe to upgrade everything and then maintain over the few years. Some libraries I know they buy a bunch of new routers this year and a bunch of new switches the next year and they upgrade the cable in the third year. You can use it up however you want to in that five year block. Right now we're in the 2021 to 2025 block of five year budget. They are fixed for the entire five year period. So whatever it starts at, it is for that whole five years. But if there's a major change in your community and you think your budget should be recalculated up or down, hopefully up, you can request a budget recalculation. They will start with whatever the budget is to the begin 2021, which is what we're in now. But if you think it should be different, you can always request a different budget for that recalculation. You get discounts on the cost of your services up to that budget amount. You can spend more than that though. You're not restricted to only what you have been budgeted. You can have a project that just for math, maybe cost $100,000 and your category two budget is only 50,000. That's okay. You'll only get $50,000 from e-rate. The rest is up to you to cover. So it's it's perfectly fine for you to you don't know you're not saying you can only spend this much. It says we just have this much that will give you feel free to spend more. So what is your my budget? That's a big question, of course. So for the current 2021 to 2025 five year cycle, it is based on for public library, the total area and square feet of your building. So everything in your walls, all floors, you may know what this is, you may have it's something that is reported in your public library survey, you might have floor plans, whatever. So you take those square feet multiply it by $4 and 50 cents right now for this five year process and then the minimum though is $25,000. So everyone gets a minimum $25,000 to spend over five years. But if you're doing the math of $4 and 50 cents times your total area and square feet of your building goes above 25,000, you get whatever that math comes. And it can be recalculated each year. If you build a new building, add on additions, those kind of things, and so it can go up or down. So some real numbers so we can see what we're talking about here. If your library is 3500 square feet, 3500 times $4 and 50 cents gives you $15,750, but the $25,000 minimum budget. So you actually since the calculation came out less, you actually do get that 25,000 of pre discount budget. So that's saying here's your full amount of what it would cost. So now is where the your discount rate comes into play. So that still does come into play with category two, just like with category one. So it says 25,000 is what you have. But you will in this case just for easy math. If your discount rate is 15% or 50% right, you get $12,500 in actually E rate funds to spend on category two services during that five year period. Now how to keep track of all this. It's all kept track of in your E rate account online. And I'll show you what that looks like in just a few slides here. So they will track it for you keep track of it and you'll be able to know how much you have available. It is a little confusing, but once you start spending it, you see that money you can use and what you can use it for it does start making more sense if you want to get into category two and purchasing equipment. Any questions about category two? Couple of the things you do need to pay attention to be aware of regarding E rate. You are required to be in compliance with SIPA. That is the Children's Internet Protection Act, which means you need to have a what they call a technology protection measure, which means filtering on your computers. This is for filtering content, internet content. So this isn't about a firewall or safety or things like that or stopping malware. This is about anything that is harmful to minors on the internet having that some sort of technology protection measure that will take care of that. You also have to have a safety internet safety policy. You may already have something that's part of your regular use policy of the library. Don't do anything illegal, that kind of thing. And you have to let your community know that you are have done this. You may have done this way back when you first decided to do filtering, had a public notice. It was an agenda item on your board meeting, library board meeting, and that's fine. Just do that once. So there's information on the USAC website about SIPA, and there's information on our eRate website about not recommendations, but lists of types of services that can do this internet filtering for you. There are no rules in SIPA that say what product you have to use. It can be on an each individual computer. It can be on your network level. And there's nothing that says what websites or specific sites you have to filter. It's about the content, things that are harmful to minors. I have a lot more detailed information on the website and on the eRate website about that. So you do need to be in compliance with SIPA to receive eRate. This has to do with receiving any federal funds. Also, there are document retention policies for eRate. You must keep copies of anything eRate related for 10 years after the last date of service. Last date of service is the last date of the funding year. So and this was so for funding year 2023 that we're currently applying for that is June 30th, 2024 is the end of service. So June 30th, 2034 is how long you need to keep anything related to this year. And this could be things that were contract signed before this year. But because they relate to this year's service, the 2023 internet service, you have to also keep all of that until for those 10 years. SIPA documentation, you just keep forever. There's no really expiration on that because you always want to make sure you have proof that you've done that. You don't have to keep piles and piles of paper, though, unlike this picture I have here. It can be a paper if you want to keep binders or file cabinets, but it can all be electronic. I highly recommend that so you don't have lots of papers around scan everything, keep it on your computer, keep it on the flash drive. I have a folder for each year so you know where it is. You just need to be able to get a hold of it if you SAC ever does ask you for proof of anything so they may want to come. They do double check on the service in the program and how it's been working. So if they do come to you and ask to show them the contract from 2020 that you signed or SIPA documentation or anything that you submitted or they will make sure you can at least just get a hold of it. All right. So the e-read forms that we use to apply for. So now we're going to get into the steps here. There are multiple e-read forms in the e-read process. The first three forms here and we'll talk a little bit each one. Everyone has to do with only a few exceptions for the first one. So everyone does a 470 at some point a 471 every year and a 46 every year. The final forms there in blue the 474 and 472 that's about getting your money. It will depend on how you're going to receive your money whether it's going to be discounts on your bills or reimbursement at the end. And then there's possibly another form depending on if you're going to get reimbursements afterwards called the 498 that you have to use to refine banking information to use that to do direct deposit of your reimbursements. So and we'll go through each of these step by step. 470 opens up your process and says hey and that's what's available right now is what you'd be starting right now. I want someone to provide me with a service. 471 letting you say no I've picked who I want. 46 saying I have started getting the service now as of that July 1 date and then 474 or 472 I'm paying my bills give me my money give me discounts. And we're going to go into the details of all of those this is not the only discussion about the forms. So don't worry about that. Now where do you do all this work. Everything is done now online in what they call Epic the E-Rate Productivity Center. And Epic is how they do pronounce that acronym. You can we recommend using Chrome or Firefox browsers not anything we can't guarantee it'll work with anything else. And it's even sometimes if you want to those each of those sometimes. But that's the most reliable. It is your one stop shopping for everything E-Rate you submit your forms you receive questions from E-Rate asking you for more information you check on your all of your applications you upload upload documents send them everything they need. Everything is done through the E-Rate Productivity Center. There's a link there that is a link to the USAC website with information about the Productivity Center lots of training and information if you need to look at that. To log into your Epic account E-Rate USAC creates an account for the organization for your library. And then one person has to be identified as the account administrator normally typically that would be the public library director. Unless you have someone else you can have do this for you. If your library is brand new to doing E-Rate and does not have an Epic a form no problem. There's a link right on the main page that says are you new click here. And you can request that they will ask for usually with the ask where is some sort of letterhead some official letters stating yes I am this is so and so public library and I am the director and I need an account set up for me. If you someone has previously applied for E-Rate and you're the new director I can work with you on getting you made the account administrator if you don't already have that access. So this is the main USAC website usac.org slash E-Rate mean E-Rate part of the website. And you'll see here there's two blue buttons that marked with the red arrows sign in sign in either one of those works to log in to the E-Rate your E-Rate your Epic account. So when you click on one of those you'll get this screen. Now I'm going to be very strict and stringent here when I talk about this page here. This is the first page that comes up and it says Epic users this is your first time logging in read this information carefully. I don't personally I don't think this is clear enough about this being first time because we have many libraries who get confused by this so I'm going to explain it clearly here. The first time you sign in so if you've never used that the epic before your first time ever using it you've just been set up with your account for the first time you have to go through these steps here you click the blue continue button you do the forgot password link. So you pick your own password enter your username user's name isn't your email address just like any other service where you reset your passwords if you've forgotten them that you click the link they send you an email you come back you create your password. You accept the terms of service. Then you confirm the email that's associated. They have multi factor authentication you may use this and lots of other services now where you log into something then they send you a code like a text to your phone or something to your email and then you have to enter that code. So there's a multi step to log into the epic account. All of this here you only do once this forgot password and set creating a new password you do not have to create a new password every time you need to log in to epic you only do this once. This is after you've reached out to you second said hey I'm new and I need to get set up then you do this after you've done this the first time you never do all of this again you just ignore all of that and just go to continue and log in. I've had too many libraries say to me well every time I go I've seen to my password and no you don't have to do it every time only the first time you signed in and I don't think that's clear enough and highlighted here enough by you you sack if you ask me they need to really kind of make that flash or something say only do this once only the first time. So please don't change your password every single time you do not have to they do make you change your password every 90 days but they will prompt you to do that when you log in at some point we'll say your password's expired pick a new one but they'll prompt you to do that you don't have to think about doing that. So only the first time don't change your password every time I know I'm repeating myself but I've had too many people do this. So we're going to hear now pretend this is our first time so we're going to click continue and then we don't have a username and password yet our very first time so we click the forgot password link type in our username which is our email address then you sack will send you an email that will look like this saying we've received your request to reset your password use this link here you've done this many times when you've actually forgotten your password on sites I know I have to do it often you only have an hour to click on this link and reset your password so you click on that link now when you and then you click on that link and then you go and choose whatever create whatever password you want once you've clicked on that link so that'll take you to enter your password and if you remember on the previous screen it did say where'd it go password has to have eight characters long one lowercase one uppercase one number and one special character some thing with that when you're making your password so after you've done that the first time now you do not do all of that creating forgot password every other future time you log in so if you've ever used Epic at all since it's been around you don't have to do any of that at all just ignore it pretend it's not there click continue and just log in now of course if you have forgotten your password really yeah use the forgot password link but you did not have to do that every time just the first time so now that you do have a password you've created you click continue type in your username and password click the box here to accept these terms and conditions and sign in then it will ask for that multi user authentication that that code that authentication code has to be sent I recommend having it sent your email so you just enter your email address hit send email it says a passcode has sent to the front that has been sent and you'll enter it there so you have to go check your email find the code it's a six digit code this is only valid for 10 minutes so this is a very quick thing the con subject is one time verification code this is only good for 10 minutes it's only good for this time you're logging in what I do as soon as I've used this code I immediately go back to my email and delete this email message you don't want to be trying any old codes they're not going to work so use this one get yourself logged in go back delete this email so you're not even have it floating around in your email enter your code there verify it and now you're at the dashboard in the Epic system there are two parts to Epic there's the E-Rate Productivity Center for doing E-Rate and there's this other special program they were doing just for COVID the emergency connectivity fund applying for that is all done so you won't be doing that when you're doing E-Rate at all only if you've ever applied for any of that you may be wrapping that up it's a whole different thing so you're going to click on E-Rate Productivity Center and then you get to your applicant landing page and I'm not going to go into everything in here like I said I've got full in-depth training coming up we're just going to go over the basics of this here there's a lot of things on here one thing I do want to mention to you we're going to zoom into the middle here where it says my entities your entity number this is your entity number also called your build entity number or BEND B-E-N for build entity number this is something that is important to know sometimes USAC will ask for it it's kind of like your social security number for you it's the main number for your library that's always associated with your library for the life your library it never changes once your library is set up with E-Rate you're assigned an entity number and it goes along with them for the lifetime of your library being in E-Rate also I want to mention here at the bottom of your landing page it says FCC forms and post-commitment requests this is where you can search and look up any E-Rate form you've ever submitted if you're wondering did I do this particular form this year did I do it last year what have I done you can always look up all your forms here for 70 for 71 for 86 500 all the different forms you can look up you can choose the funding year 2021 2020 goes all the way back to 2016 when this epic system first became available and then you'll see if you've done the forms or not over here in stats you can see certified yep you've done and submitted it incomplete you're still working on it so you can always look up any form print it out look at it see what you did before you can always double-check your library's forms so the basic forms to apply for E-Rate we are running close to 11 o'clock here it takes a little longer sometimes for me to get through these things than I expect well it will go as long as it takes for me to get through showing you about all the forms if you do need to leave it's only a lot of an hour for today's show I apologize please do go ahead we are recording everything you'll be able to not just later but if you're able to stick around please do also if you have any questions get them into the questions section I will answer all the questions that come in before we wrap things up for this morning so the first form of the E-Rate process which is available right now is the 470 this is where it's called you open a competitive bidding process so you're saying we are looking for someone to provide us with a service and we want to receive E-Rate on it this could be a provider who you currently have who would do this for you or getting a new provider either way there are a few criteria signs when you do not have to do a 470 it's only two very specific cases if you are in a multi-year contract meaning you've signed a E-Rate contract or an internet contract internet service contract for a provider that covers multiple years like a three-year contract you only do the 470 the first year when you first got that contract you don't want to do it every other year because you've already done that looking for someone to provide you with a service that's the purpose of this form is looking for someone you found that person person that company so for every year of the contract you get to skip the 470 you do still have to do the second form the 471 every year letting E-Rate know you're still getting that service so you get to skip the 470 be still got to do the 471 there's no getting out of that also another special case this is where you second the FCC is trying to encourage providers to provide this type of service if you can find this really fast internet at this really good price you don't have to do any sort of competitive bidding or looking for the best deal because this is already a great deal if you can get it where it costs less than $300 a month and you can get at least 100 megabits per second speed you can skip the 470 and you just go right to the 471 and you in that form say hey this is what we've already found invoice from the provider showing this previously when I started talking about this there weren't a lot of vendors that did this but now there are so look for this if you can find someone that does this you could just skip all of this competition and competitive bidding or and any of this you just say yes this is who we're going with and you that will say great good job now where do you apply for your 470 when you're on your applicant landing page up here in the upper right you'll see there's all sorts of links to all different forms your 470 is up here and you click on that and brings you into your funding year 2023 form and we're not like I said I'm not going through the whole form today that's what our full workshops are for but that's where you can go to start your 470 after you submitted a 470 you will get notification from e-rate letting you know that it has been received you can make any corrections if you made some typos or errors you can always redo it you can make those changes if you think you made major changes you want to start a whole new one you can also start a whole new one and do a second one after you submit your 470 then you have to wait 28 days to let anyone reach out to you any company say hey I can provide you with this service whether it's your current company or a new one that the 28 days after you've submitted your 470 is called your allowable contract date that's the first date that you can do your 471 which is officially picking your new your vendor and letting usack no luckily usack will send you in your news your libraries news saying here we've received your 470 and here is what your allowable contract date is they will let you know that so you can keep note of that I've got to wait those 28 days before I can do the second step in the process do not jump the gun if you jump the gun and do that second form before those 28 days you'll be denied your E-rate because you broke the E-rate rules you've got to give that's the that's the legal thing from the FCC you have to give vendors that 28 days so what happens during the 20 days officially is what they call competitive bidding this is when you may receive quotes reaching out to you from vendors saying hey I saw in your 470 you're looking for this service we can provide it for you you look at them you compare the offers you receive and you select what they call the most cost effective bid you must have a fair and open bidding process everyone treat the same you cannot let the vendors help you do your 470 or submit it or tell you here put this on the form so that it will be the company you pick you must make cost your primary factor but not your only factor so that's important but other things may be important to you as well now there are some cases in competitive bidding when special situations that people ask about what if you have a current contract with the company that's perfectly okay you just do your 470 you wait your 28 days so maybe you're this is your first time doing E-rate you already have a contract and you want to get E-rate now wait 28 days and then your current contract becomes one of your bid responses if you have multiple replies from companies you would then compare it and hopefully the existing one is the winning bid and then now you can just use that current contract you're in and start getting your E-rate discount on it so you don't have to start a new contract with somebody if you already have one in effect you just make it one of the bids you might not get any other bids and that's okay that you just go with them is the only one another question I get a lot is what if the city pays for the library's internet that's okay too you can use cost allocations what they call separate out the library's internet use from the rest of the city's internet use and get a discount on just the portion of the internet that is from the library you can have actual statistical data from your service provider they might be able to tell you oh this much internet goes to City Hall this much goes to the fire department this much goes to the library and then you just get a discount on that part you only get e-mail and the library's portion so it's okay if the city's paying for internet you can help them out and get a little discount on the library's part what if you only get one bid or no bids that's okay too you don't have to have multiple bids you don't have to have a competition if you only get one bid and it's the best one you can accept it if you only get your own company that you're currently with is a bit that's perfectly fine to you just go with it if you didn't have anyone contact you you can after your 28 days then you can reach out to vendors wait that 28 days they'll let everyone try to reach out to you nobody does then you can contact them if you know there's a company you want to work with and they haven't contact you you can say hey send them an email phone call I did e-rate can you please reply or ask your current provider if you just want to stick with them to just submit some sort of a bid or an email or notice you letting you notifying you that yes we will continue with you after that it's closed closing your competitive bidding process there's no special thing to do to close it you just pick the once that date is done it's closed there's no announcement there's no click a button to do that is just that's it and then you officially pick who it's going to be sign a contract if you need to if you're doing something new and then you do your 471 but only during what they call the application filing window there's a specific period in time that you can only apply do your 471 and that is usually happens in the spring January through March so the 471 is the second form of the process you have to file this every year very clear about this must be filed every year even if you didn't do your 471 because you're in a multi-year contract or you didn't do the 470 because you found that good deal whatever it is that's okay you skip your 470 you can never skip your 471 always have to do that every year so and this is just letting you sec know who you've picked or who you're continuing to go with this is also where you'll see your discount calculation will appear and you agree to all rules of the program on the form once you get to the 471 then you can work with your provider whoever you've picked make sure you're doing all the everything right that you're selecting the right speed and you're doing category two the right equipment let them know how you want to receive your discount so once you do the 470 470 you can't work with a vendor you do that on your own 471 then you start working with who you've picked to make sure everything gets submitted correctly when to post it I mentioned that application filing window you have to wait till the 28 days first sign some kind of contract or have a contract already and then you've got to wait for that window to open up usually mid January with mid March they don't announce those days till around the end of December so just keep your eyes open for when this is available if you if you tried to go into 471 it won't let you because it's not available to that window there's a very short period of time where you can do this step in the process Luckily for that 28 days if you're not sure can't remember e-rate will automatic prompt you and let you know when your allowable contract date has been reached so let you know when it is early enough to do your 471 so that you don't do it you know jump the gun and do it too soon so wait for this email and then wait for the application filing window they also put this into your news in your epic account so when you can do your 471 after the 28 days and during the filing window same thing at the top there's a 471 button that you click on or 471 link same thing as a 470 you do get a or see acknowledgement letting you know that it's been submitted and you can make some corrections if you need to if you've made a typo or errors or something wrong you can always make corrections you can also submit a new one if you did something wrong and have them cancel the previous one that's okay too none of this stuff is in stone until you're totally done with it so it's okay if you make mistakes changes can be made or you can just start a whole fresh one after you've done your 471 this is when you get into the waiting period and this is when your application goes into application review with USAC's program integrity assurance department they are the ones that review your forms and they may reach out to you with questions checking eligibility making sure everything's correct or proof of whatever that they might need and this can go on for months so this is not again for 70 471 and then you wait for them to ask you questions they might ask you any questions see what happens if they do and you don't understand or you want help that's when you contact me that's what I'm here for I can help you answer any of the questions they have interpret their USAC ease as I call it and I can help you answer any questions that they have when they're done with all of their review then you receive the funding commitment decision letter FCDL this is when they let you know if you've been funded or not if they reduced your funding this is your official notification that yes you have been approved you are receiving E-Rate discount you might get more than one so keep an eye you read it to make sure it's covering everything if you disagree if you get denied or so this is a letter you'll get an email sent to you so this will be an email sent to your email address you don't have to go into your account and keep checking they'll proactively send you an email saying funding commitment decision letters available and it just says in the email says your letters attached read it it doesn't say in the email what the letter says so you've got these PDF attached and then it says in this case yes you've been total committed here's the amount you're getting and it even has next step tells you exactly what to do next so as soon as soon as you get this email you immediately go on to the next step there's no waiting anymore there's no specific time period of when you need to do anything after this the third form in the process is the forty six and this is where many libraries lose it in the process they think I got the letter we've got our money yay I'm done nope you still have to tell you sack you want to accept the funding and this letter just means the money has been approved and set aside for you now let us know that you still want it and that you are ready to receive it and do the services sometimes situations may change in that you know those months and months of doing of when you've applied you know sent in the application the forms the previous forms so may happen so you've got to do your forty six let them no services started this is where you certify that you're compliant with SIPPA this is also the easiest form in the process to do because everything you need is already in epic and auto fills the form you've got your four seventy information your four seventy one it's all in the system they just dump it in this form you just got to go click click click yes yes yes this is all correct and submit it there's really nothing you have to proactively enter but it's where unfortunately lots of libraries losing the process that's okay I do track everything you're doing as well and I will know let you know and med you if you haven't done some of these forms forty six also right up there at the top of your page click on that and it'll bring you into the form so there is a deadline by when you have to submit your forty six to get your funding it is a hundred and twenty days after your service starts that July first date or at the date of your funding commitment decision letter your funding commitment decision letter could come after this the funding year has started that is true they have so many forms to go through it could take that long if it is if you receive it before July first October twenty ninth is the first deadline for possibly submitting that funding commitment decision letter that's in order to get your full discount if you do it late you're not out of luck you just will be received less funding based on how late your forty six is submitted that the number of months you are late is that for much less funding you'll receive same thing I keep an eye on this I will let you know if you haven't submitted this and that is due after you've done the forty six USAC will send you and your service provider letter letting you know both know that it has been processed and that you are wanting the money and that is because the next step in the process is the invoicing the last step is actually the last step in the process this is where you choose how you want to receive your discount there's two different ways of getting it receiving a discount on your bills as you go or paying everything in full and getting a reimbursement after with the funding year is over we highly recommend if you can have it done with discounting your bills it's much easier because if you do you are done with the live as a library with your forty six the forty six is your last form in the e-rate process you don't have to do anything more your service provider has to follow through and give you the discount on your bills so if you can do that that would be great so work with your provider ask them if they'll just automatically discount your bills and then you know I've done my forty six now it's all on them I'll start getting bills that are just cheaper so the service provider invoice is the four seventy four that is to get the discounts on your bills they submit that form you don't as a library now it's on them to give you a discount and then the service provider asks e-rate to reimbursement for them reimburse them for the amount they're discounting you the service provider always gets paid in full just part from you part from you sec now if they won't discount your bills then you can do they call the bear form the build entity applicant reimbursement for seventy two this is where you pay your bills in full then you get reimbursed afterwards and this is the form that you would submit this is also due in the end of an October but the end hundred twenty days after the last service date of June 30th or a hundred twenty days after whenever you did your forty six same thing I will notify you if you haven't done these forms and this is a direct reimbursement from you sec bank transfer right into a bank account of yours and this is what I was talking about earlier that you have to provide banking information to you sec they don't send checks or anything they just use tell it what bank account to go into and it goes there so if you do need to do that your receive your discount through reimbursement doing your bear form then you have to do this extra form 498 you only have to do this once so if you're already receiving had already been doing this already getting those discounts you've already done this 498 you don't have to do it every year this is just a one time thing unless your banking information changes of course it's one time thing give them your banking vote and then for all the future as long as it's still your bank account the library's bank account they'll just keep depositing your reimbursements into this basic banking information federal ID number all the usual kind of things that you would do for a direct deposit this is a different place in your epic account it's not up here on the top because it's only just in case thing three forms you have to do every year are all up here 70 471 46 they're all right up there to get to the 498 you click on your library's name here and then there's a bunch of menu items news I told you about before but click on related actions that you get a long list the whole bunch of things you need to you can do and way down here somewhere is create FC form 498 when you go into there then you put in all your banking information once they've approved all your banking information then you'll be able to do your 472 your bear form and request your reimbursement so do if you ever think you might ever want to do reimbursement just get this done at any time and then it's set and good to go because it does take a few weeks for all that back and forth with them with sending in documentation and avoided check and whatnot and making sure that that's all set and ready to go for you to do your bear then if you've done your 498 your banking information is all there there's a new process for doing bear form of the 472 used to be on a whole separate website but now it is part of Epic but you have to request access first there is a spreadsheet that you send into e-rate use act to tell them you create a customer service case and then they will let you know when your access has been set up there's a whole website there's a use act URL there website to go to with the template that you fill out basically just putting in yes, I'm a librarian yes, I want to do this and then they'll set up your access once they have done that you'll notice when you log in remember before we had two choices when we first logged in of the U.A. Productivity Center and the emergency connectivity fund now you'll have a third choice for your bear for doing your 472 for whenever you might need to use it and when you click on that it just asks you for your entity number that build entity number I told you before and you log in and request your discount so slightly different process now but everything now all e-rate forms now are in the Epic system yay after you have done that you'll get a notification just like everything else letting you know that it's been processed and then no matter which way you're receiving your discounts whether it's discounts on your bill from your service provider using what they call their service provider invoice form spy or reimbursements after the fact using the bear build entity applicant reimbursement you'll get a courted report from USAC email to you letting you know what's been submitted so for you just confirming that you're getting your reimbursements make sure they're going into your bank account if you're doing we can discounts on your bills make sure this report matches up with a discount your provider's giving you because this is telling you this is how much money USAC has sent your provider they should be passing around long that amount of money to you at your live in your library on your on your bills all right and that's the last process that's the last step in the e-rate process we've gone through the whole thing all the forms and everything you need to do anybody have any questions nobody's typed any questions in yet please let me know if you have any questions I can answer anything you have right now type into the question section I might be happy to can clarify anything for you explain anything this is the end of the process here so I want to see if anyone is confused about anything or has any questions anything I didn't cover please do let me know I'll give you a minute or two here to type in any questions you might have I said this is an annual process multiple forms to do full training is coming full three hour workshop with more detail coming later in the year this is just a quick basic overview of the process all right well I have mentioned our e-rate website this URL for it and I'll see it at brasska.gov slash e-rate we have links to lots of good resources the timeline I mentioned earlier USEC has lots of online videos and tutorials showing you how to work through all these forms as well as well as some PDF user guides depending on how you might want to have instructions they are they will be doing online training coming in as I mentioned earlier I attend their training and then use that information to my own training but it is open for anyone to attend as well coming sometime and in November, December they've not launched the dates yet but as soon as they do I will push that information out and let you all know you are welcome to apply attend that as well it's all going to be done online theirs is usually multiple workshops and is then recorded for you watch later if you want to you can also reach out to the client service bureau that is what USEC calls their customer service 1-888-203-8100 if you want to call them there is a contact us link in your Epic account where you can send an email type form to them if you want to get any help from them directly or you can also contact me of course I am your state e-rate coordinator for public libraries I can answer any questions guide you through anything help you hold your hand there's my email address 800 number here at the library commission and the Nebraska's our e-rate webpage with more resources so any questions nobody's asking any questions yet I hope it was I know this is a lot of information very quickly but this is just a nice overview of the process to get you started let me know if you do have any questions any issues as you're submitting your forms I can guide you through that and look for upcoming workshops on fiber special construction and e-rate in general all right then I think we will wrap it up for today for today's Encompass Live thank you everybody for being here today send me any questions you have please do that'll wrap up for today's show it has been recorded and it will be available here this is our main Encompass Live website where we have our upcoming shows our archives are here today's will be at the top of the page here by the end of the day tomorrow you should see it there everyone who attended today's show and registered for today's show get an email from me letting you know when it is available we'll have a recording and the slides available there we also push out all this information on our Encompass Live Facebook page I've got that over here you can see here as a reminder to log into today's show when the recording of the preview show is available so we'll push that out on here as well as onto Twitter as well and we use Encompass Live as our abbreviation our hashtag for Encompass Live so if you'd like to use Facebook give us like there or just look for our hashtag elsewhere all right so that will wrap it up for today's show thank you everybody for being here I know send me any questions you have about e-rate our next Encompass Live show next Wednesday is team up with your community Noah Lester he's been on the show multiple times before he is from the University of North Carolina Greensboro and he is going to be talking about ways to collaborate with your community he does a lot of work with getting active in your community so definitely do sign up for that show and any of our other upcoming shows we have Encompass Live you see I've got August, September dates in here just to notice you'll see here we have our October 5th we know Encompass Live that week we always skip the week of our Nebraska Library Association Conference everybody's involved with attending the conference usually many people are so we don't do our show so we will be skipping that week so other than that thank you everybody for being here with me today I hope this was helpful questions anything you have any issues with e-rate call me, email me I am here for you bye