 Hello, and welcome to E-Rate. What's new for 2022? I am Krista Porter. I am the Library Development Director here at the Nebraska Library Commission. But one of my duties as Library Development Director is I'm also the State E-Rate Coordinator for Public Libraries in Nebraska. So it is my job to help all of our public libraries apply for and receive their E-Rate funding. I do consultations, training, workshops like this, one-on-one sessions, any sort of answering questions that anybody has, helping you step-by-step go through all the forms and all the steps in the process. So that is what my job is here, one of my jobs here, faculty library commissions to make sure you get through the E-Rate process. So in today's workshop, we are going to go through the basics of the E-Rate program and get into some specifics of doing some of the different forms. The whole process from beginning to end. Today's workshop will be good for beginners, anyone who has never done E-Rate before. If this is your first time doing it and you have no idea what the program is all about or if you're curious, definitely do that. But also good for people who have been doing E-Rate for years. So it's good to have a refresher and update on things that you might not have remembered or any new things that might have come up in the program. Let's get started. So what is E-Rate? What are we talking about here today? The E-Rate program was created by the Telecommunications Act of 1996. It is a federal program, as their admission statement here states, to ensure that schools and libraries contain 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. So what does that all mean? This is a discount program. It is not a grant. It is not a loan or anything like that. It is discounts on your monthly internet services, wherever you get your monthly internet from. And you receive discounts on purchasing and installing any equipment in your library that may be needed to make that internet work. Servers, switches, cabling, all of those kind of things. It is funded. The money to provide these discounts to schools and libraries comes from the universal service fee. This is a fee that we all pay as users of internet or telephone service. And the telecommunications providers also, or internet service and phone providers also pay in. So you'll see this on your phone bill or your internet bill. It may say universal service fee. It may say USF. They use different acronyms and abbreviations for that. So we all pay into this pot of money that is then used to help our schools and libraries be able to afford good internet at their locations. So the e-rate program is run by the FCC, Federal Communications Commission. They oversee the program. They set our rules and policies. So we look to them to, for the basics of how things should happen, are supposed to happen. When they created the e-rate program, they created the Universal Service Administrative Company, which is called USAC, is a company that does the day-to-day administration of the e-rate program. This is who you deal with regularly for all of your e-rate applications. USAC also handles some other programs as well. In addition to the e-rate program, that's your schools and libraries. There is a discount program for healthcare facilities. People with low income and people in high cost areas. So when I am talking about e-rate to you and teaching and discussing it and working with you on it, you hear me reference USAC all the time because that's who you will be communicating with. And the schools and libraries program is a specific subset of USAC that deals with e-rate, which originally is a kind of an abbreviation for education for things for schools and libraries. E-rate runs on a funding year. When you are applying for e-rate, you are thinking to the future. The funding year runs from July 1st through June 30th of the following year. So right now, what you are applying for for e-rate is for funding year 2022, which will start July 1st, 2022, and go through June 30th, 2023. Right now we are in the 2021 funding year, and libraries are already receiving a discount for that. And they are working on doing things related to the 2021 year that we are in right now. So in the 2021 funding year, you will apply for 2022. So you may be working on multiple funding years at the same time at a different step in the process of e-rate. So it's good to just try and keep in your mind, keep straight which year you are trying to work with, depending on what you are doing, depending on what form you are submitting, what questions you are going to ask from USAC. They will always refer to the funding year right off the bat to let you know what exactly they are talking about. Is it the current one? Is it the future one? Is it from a few years ago? Whichever it is. So there is certain timing of program activities. Certain things will happen at certain times throughout the funding year. Before a particular funding year starts, that's when you actually start your application. The form is available right now to start. That's what we are talking about right now. Today you do competitive bidding, and we will get into all the details of that later. And you decide who you are going to go with so that when the funding year starts on July 1st next year, you are all ready to go with your discounts. At the beginning of the funding year, July 1st of whatever year it is, that's when your service is that you will receive discounts on the start and your discounts will start happening. And then sometimes during or after a funding year is what they call invoicing, which is when you receive your funding, your monies. During the year, you can receive discounts automatically on your bills from your service provider via them. They'll automatically give you bills that already have that amount taken off. Or after the funding year is over, you can have paid, if you paid your bills in full, then you can receive a discount directly, a reimbursement directly to you at your library. You have a choice of which way you want to go with. Some libraries do it one way or the other, whichever you prefer. Some service providers work better one way or the other. But you've got those two options. So who is eligible for e-rate? Who can apply? Libraries and library systems must be eligible for, per USAC FCC rules. They must be eligible to receive LSTA funds. This is Library Service and Technology Act funds. The FCC is determined that state library agencies are in charge of deciding who this is, who does receive these funds, and who would then be considered an eligible library to apply for e-rate. Here in Nebraska, the Nebraska Library Commission, that's us, is the state library agency. So we have determined that in Nebraska, all public libraries are eligible because we use LSTA funding here at the Library Commission to provide all libraries with certain services. They pay for some of the databases we might offer you, training, salaries, all depends on various things. And because you receive those services that are funded via LSTA, using LSTA funds, then you are receiving, you are eligible for LSTA-funded things, and then you are eligible to apply for e-rate. Schools and school districts are also eligible. As I said at the very beginning, I am the state, my duty is a state e-rate coordinator for public library specifically. Here in Nebraska, the Nebraska Department of Education helps our schools and school districts apply and receive their e-rate funding, so I don't deal with the schools. And if we have consortia groups where we got together to get a discount on internet services, you can also apply as a group if you wanted to. But here in Nebraska, mostly we are school districts applying, the Department of Education helping out, and individual libraries applying, which I help them. So the first thing I do when I'm talking to libraries about doing e-rate for the first time is talking about deciding if it's something that's worth it for you to do. And to do this, you want to figure out how much of a discount you are going to receive. And you can do this yourself before even applying for any forms, before being part of the program, before submitting anything. You can just use some data that we have and calculate how much of a discount you would receive on your services if you did go through the e-rate process. E-rate is in a year of, you know, as I mentioned earlier, there's funding years, there's forms to submit throughout the year, it's something that you have to keep up on regularly. So it can take some work to keep up on, but if you get a good discount, it could be worth it. So how much of a discount can your library receive? Anywhere from 20% to 90% off your services you can receive. This would be your monthly internet service and any equipment you might need to purchase to make that internet work. The discount is calculated by first looking at the percentage of students that are eligible for the school lunch program. This is the free and reduced lunches in the school district in which your library is located. So you may provide services to students and children from other districts nearby, and that's fine. They go wherever. But for e-rate purposes, they look at just specifically where is your library physically located? What is that school district? We're going to look at those numbers. The FCC decided they needed to use some way to figure out where the more needier areas in the country. And there are many different indicators of poverty you can look at, and they said we're going to use the school lunch program with the students, and that will determine who the more students that are eligible for the program, the higher the discount rate will be for that library. Something to note here too first, you can include the 3K numbers over the received services. They just have you look at kindergarten through senior year 12th grade. And also it says the number of students that are eligible for the program, not that receive the school lunch program funding. So, but not the ones that participate in the school lunch program. So there may be some people that are eligible, some families, but just don't need to. They figure out how they cover the lunches themselves. They just don't want to apply for various reasons. So there's no worry about private information going out. This is not we're not asking for who are all the students getting this lunch. It's not that at all. It's just based on math and looking at the numbers. What percentage of the kids in the school district could would be eligible for the school lunch program. In addition to that, you look at whether you're considered considered urban or rural, where your library is located. And this is uses census data, US census data. Luckily, Nebraska are mostly rural. So get it in some cases a slightly higher discount rate. So where do you get these numbers from? Luckily for us here, the Nebraska Department of Education post their school lunch numbers on their website. And I've given you the link here. All these links in this presentation are also available on our website. I'll show you at the end of the workshop. So you can go there and look up your school district and find out what percentage of the children are eligible. And then usag posts has as on their website, a look up tool to see whether you're considered urban or rural. And as far as the FCC is concerned, urban areas are populations equal to a greater than 25,000. Anything below that is rural. So, you know, the population in Nebraska, that's pretty much all the state is rural, a couple of pockets of, you know, our identity areas, but other than that, most providers are rural. And then you look at the discount matrix that they have a chart to determine your discount with these two numbers. And here is the matrix. So down the side there, you can see the percentage of students that are eligible to the school lunch program, and then whether you're urban or rural. You'll notice here there's two categories category one category two, there's two different types of funding you can receive. And I'll get into that in a second year. But you can see here with just 50% or less of your students eligible in a rural area, you can receive 70% off on your internet service. That could be huge for some of you, 70% off on your monthly cost and 70% off on any equipment and things you may need to purchase. Most of our libraries in Nebraska fall in the 60 to 80% range actually, so we have many of them that are 70 or 80% so we're discount rate. We've got a few less and a few that put 90, but most are in the middle there. So, this is something to just, you know, look at to real if you're wondering, or if you need to talk to your library board or your community about is this something I should be spending time on. Like I said, it's an ongoing process, certain times throughout the year you got to do certain forms and keep up on things. But if you can receive 60, 70, 80% off on some of your bills. Definitely worth the time and effort to go through doing it. So what can you receive an e-ray discount on? What is irradiable? I don't know if irradiable is word, but I made it up for this purpose. Every year the FCC publishes their eligible services list and is linked to it on our website. This is a list of the type of the things that you can receive an e-ray discount on. Now there's a new list every year that is specific for that funding year. So if you are wanting to look at this list to determine what can I apply for next year or did I apply for the right things this year? Am I looking back on an older list for some reason? Make sure you're looking at the right list for the right funding year. There are two categories of service and they are separated basically by the library's wall. This graphic I put together here, this is BRICS, so that's what's through the library's wall. Category one is services for getting the high speed internet connectivity to your library building. So whatever way you receive your internet, how it comes and gets the internet from your service provider just to your building walls. And if you needed to do any one-time construction or installation of things outside the library building, that would fall to get the internet connection hooked up. That would be category one. Category two is after the internet services at your building, how do you make it work so that all the devices can use it? So all the equipment that runs your network, modems, routers, switches, wireless access points, cables, anything in the building physically that you would need to use to make it work. And the installation and upkeep of those pieces of equipment. Now the devices that you can see here that would use the internet, those are not eligible for e-rate. E-rate is about service, the internet service and getting the service itself and making it work. The devices you use to access it are not anything that is eligible for e-rate. So your laptops and PCs and phones, those themselves are not eligible for an e-rate discount, but whatever it takes to get the internet to work on them on all those devices, that is what's eligible for e-rate discount. So specifically for category one, this is basically anything that gets high speed internet to your library. So any way of getting a cable modem DSL, fiber, wireless, satellite, this isn't every single thing, but this is just the most common ones. So any way you are receiving internet to your building from a service provider is eligible for category one. Now we have a lit and dark fiber, a little explanation about that. The fiber that is lit is just out there. Available providers have it as a service and you can sign up for them and just get it. Dark fiber is fiber that is out there. The actual fiber optic lines are out there, but they have not been turned on yet. When fiber is being laid and has been laid over the years, they put in more fiber optic lines than is needed at the time, thinking of there will be an increase in demand in the future. So it's out there just waiting for someone to use it. At the E-Rage, you can put out feelers and see who owns this dark fiber. And if it is something that can be run to your library and your community, then you can have them turn it on and then you're able to use the dark fiber. It's become lit. There's a note here that if you are looking to see if someone has dark fiber, you got to apply for both lit and dark at the same time. Luckily our first form E-Rate process when requesting looking for services, that 470 automatically requires you to do that. See all your options. Gather all the information you can about what might be available, what you could potentially receive as a service to see, so they make it kind of do that automatically. Also part of category one is special construction. If you need to, and this is specifically for just running new fiber, the only if you're looking at a fiber connection, if you need to run, for example, there may be fiber line that comes to somewhere in your community, but a few blocks away from the library building, or fiber is in the next town, but you need to bring it to your community. Special construction is a one-time cost for getting that installed, having those lines run to your building, and you can receive a discount on that, your discount on all those construction costs under category one. This would include the design, project management, the actual work being done. All of that can be, you can get a discount on. Now, USAC does know, it does understand that companies doing this kind of construction don't necessarily, can't necessarily work just within the e-rate funding year of that July 1st to June 30th. They do allow you to start construction up to six months before the funding year starts. So up to January of a funding year, you can actually have this construction done. Even though it's before the funding year has started, you will still receive your e-rate discount on it. The idea is when the funding year starts, the construction is all done and you start off on July 1st, you have your fiber connection ready to go and you are able to start using it. Now, a new thing that the e-rate set up, that USAC set up a few years ago related to special construction is encouraging state matching funds, encouraging states to come up with funding to help libraries pay for the extra amount that a special construction project may cost. So if a library has a disc, the project costs a certain amount and they receive some of that discounted, they start to cover whatever is left. If a state can come up with state matching funds, the e-rate will then provide, will up to additional 10% matching whatever the state is helping the library pay for for that difference. So this is for new construction, to just bring the fiber for the first time to a school or library. So this can't be used just for upgrading your fiber or making your speed faster. This is if you don't have fiber at all and you want it for the first time. So the math here, and this is just kind of a nice round number of math to make it easy to understand. You have a bid from a service provider who says we can run fiber from where it is to your building, excuse me, and it'll cost $100,000. The library has an 80% e-rate discount. So e-rate already right off the bat, just the basic e-rate program pays $80,000 of that and the library is still responsible for the actual $20,000. But in the state, there's a state matching fund that says we'll be 10% of our project. So that's 10% $10,000. And then e-rate says, oh, you have a state matching fund, we'll match that state, those state funds and we'll also contribute $10,000. Making the library and the communities cost to have fiber run zero. So here's just the numbers here. $100,000 project. E-rate discount pays 80% of it. The state pays, the e-rate discount pays $80,000. State pays $10,000. E-rate pays another $10,000 matching that state funding and the library has to pay nothing. This is an awesome deal. Why am I mentioning this? Because we have this in Nebraska now. As of last year, we have a special construction state matching program through the Nebraska Public Service Commission in Nebraska. We have our own universal service fee. That's with the NUSF 17 up there at the top and this is the Project 117 on the Nebraska Universal Service Fund and is run through the Public Service Commission and they have budgeted a million dollars to use over four years to help libraries and schools get fiber run to their buildings. The start of the last year and it's available through 2024. We have a link there that goes to the Public Service Commission webpage with all the information about applying and how it all works. Last year we had six libraries do this and received the discount and received the state matching funds and get fiber into the library and we're hoping to have a lot more over the next three years of this available funding. In order to receive this, you do have to apply for e-rate just like you normally would using your 470 form to be who's got fiber out there in front of it. You pick who you're going to go with and decide who you are going to provide the service and then you tell you apply to the Public Service Commission saying, hey, we've made this decision and we'd like to apply to you for this funding. Now for the current year the deadline is passed to get into this or 2021 unfortunately. The deadline to apply to the Public Service Commission to receive their state matching funds is December 31st, 2021. In e-rate you have to wait during a competitive bidding period when you first do your 470 until you can make your decision if you wait 28 days. Because of the timing of this, the timing of this workshop, that 28 days is going to be passed December 31st before you can make your decision but that's okay. You can get the processes and can look into it for next year or thereafter. This will be available for another couple of years. You will have to do your 470 early enough in the year in the fall usually. Pick who you're going to go with then you submit the application to the Public Service Commission with a copy of your 470 and you've decided to choose as your provider. Sometime in January you'll have to wait until if you've been approved and then you would do your second form of the process, the 471 which is where you tell USAC here's who we've picked to go with if the services are going to receive and they will include a letter from the Public Service Commission with that form saying and we've got state matching funds so that that e-rate knows that they will match those state matching funds later and the libraries that applied to do this did receive the funding. They applied to the 470, they applied the Public Service Commission all of them received the matching funds and are now getting the fiber have the fiber installed at the discount. So something to know about and look forward to for next year we do do earlier this year we did specific workshops just on the state special construction and state matching funds we do that earlier in the year in the summer so look forward to that next year if you are potentially thinking about doing this or something of the helpful to you. So that's all of our category one what is available, your basic internet service and it has kind of special construction. Now category two is what they call internal connections all the equipment that needs to be in your building to make the broadband work throughout your library so this would be all those things in your network closet like this wonderful picture of these nice neat cables on here. So your routers and switches and cables and access wireless access points, power supplies any software needed to run the network so specifically network software not something like Microsoft Word that you use on a computer but anything that would need to run your network updating all of that is eligible for is what category two is racks are the actual shells that these physical racks of these pieces of equipment sit on in your closet or wherever you have it set up in your library so all of these things are what is eligible all these pieces of equipment but also the basic maintenance of these pieces of equipment you of this internal connections once you have something installed you're going to need to update it at some point you might need to repair things, a squirrel might get in the walls, you chew through the cables your internet cables and you need to have them rerun all of those kind of things are also eligible for e-read discount too specifically this basic maintenance is only the work that they will actually do for you so you may have a company you have on call for example $20 a month you pay them to be on call whenever you might need something done and that's great but you can't get an e-read discount on something unless they have to actually come and do work if they come and they have to try to do their hourly rates or whatever the equipment they needed to replace the charge for those those costs of actually doing work is what you can receive an e-read discount on in the e-read forms when we get into when I get into showing you how that works they have it set up now where if you select you want to receive an e-read discount on any piece of equipment here you have a check box to say and we also want to receive an e-read discount if we have to do basic maintenance on this particular piece of equipment they have a nice slick do it both together and then kind of a one-dome in addition there could be some things that fall into either category one or two all your taxes and surcharges and fees going along with purchasing your equipment or paying your monthly internet fee is eligible so make sure that you include those costs it's going to cost me this much it's not just the cost of the service but all those fees too for getting equipment or shipping charges installation charges all of that set up any of those costs are eligible training specifically to train your staff to know how to run the network if you have to pay to send them to go to training somewhere or to watch a webinar or something that is eligible as well now it may be confusing to some of our libraries out there and we may not know what exactly is all these pieces of equipment what are they how do I know what I have how do I know what I should even or could even upgrade to and we have available to us this gigabit libraries toolkit this is something that is out there free for anyone to use it's specifically designed for our small and rural libraries it was funded by a grant from IMLS the Institute of Museum and Library Services and we actually have staff here who is involved in this who created this and they just had a recently had an updated grant a new grant just this past year where they updated the information in it as well so it's very current very useful it is basically takes you question answer thing of going into your network closet looking at all of your equipment that you have and figuring out what it all is taking inventory determining the brands the models how they'll work and then giving you suggestions of a plan of how you could upgrade which pieces might need to be upgraded now which ones are still good because they're relatively recent different things you can do to do that so we do we have libraries in Nebraska you probably don't have IT person you don't have a specific person on very often they don't have a specific person on staff who is in charge of keeping care of your IT it might be you as the one library staff person or side thing you do maybe some community who comes in just to help you out because they know a lot about this kind of thing and that's great but this will help you if you don't know if you don't have anybody who you can who does this for you and you need to figure it out yourself or even you do have someone who does this for you they this could help them just to organize everything that you have in the library and what it's all about so we have a link to this on our e-rate website as well so we highly recommend going there and using this toward gigabit libraries tool kit to try and figure out what you have excuse me and what you could or should excuse me be updating so category one and category two work a little differently in it when it comes to receiving your funding category one is pretty cut in your eyes you pay a monthly amount for something to receive your percentage off of that the category two USAC has set up a little differently and created what they call budgets a chunk of money that you can use gradually to purchase any of the equipment or update any equipment that you have now I think they use the word budget and I find that a little confusing and misleading to me budget means here's money go ahead and spend it this is more of a mathematical thing where we are setting aside for you some real calculation and we're kind of holding on this amount of money for you and as you want to you can kind of use you will use it down throughout it and so let's explain that a little better here USAC has here calculates five-year budget you have a certain amount of money you can use or over five-year time period and you've used it to purchase anything under that category two section they have specific five-year blocks of time right now we're in the 2021 through 2025 five-year time period the next one will be 2026 through 2030 so from now 2025 there's a budget that they calculate that you can use to purchase these equipment they did a pilot project of this over the last five or six years to figure out if this is how this would work and if it was good and they seem to like it and it worked and libraries were getting their money so now it is a official way of calculating this at the beginning of that five-year time period they just they decide how much you're going to receive they do not adjust it throughout that five-year cycle for inflation or anything it's just the beginning so in 2021 the amount you receive with retirement and then you have to wait 2026 for them to determine the next five-year cost however you can request a budget recalculation anytime in the budget cycle so USAC won't proactively make any changes to the amount that is available but if you know you have some sort of change like your school lunch numbers have changed so much that your discount number has changed and you can request that they make they look at it again and recalculate your particular library's budget and I'll show you in just a second here what those numbers are the library you can receive discounts on the cost of services up to your budget amount but this doesn't mean you can only spend that much for example if you have a $100,000 project but your category two budget is only $50,000 that's okay you're allowed to do things that are bigger than the budget just understand that e-rate will only give you a discount on the first $50,000 of that $100,000 because that's all you have available now how is this actually calculated what amount of money are we talking about here for the current five-year period we're in for libraries it is calculated by looking at the total square feet of your library building how big your space is that you have so you may have this on Blueprints I know it is submitted it is reported as on your public library survey so you can look there whatever number you put there is your square feet of your building anything in the walls, all on the floors, all of that that's the library and you take that number and multiply it by $4.50 that's $4.50 per square foot but there's a minimum budget of $25,000 everybody buy the focus to $25,000 budget to use over the next five years so budgets can also be recalculated whenever you want if the size of your building changes so that request for a recalculation that you can do could be for not just because your school lunch numbers have changed but if you have an expansion onto the building if you build a new building it's a completely different size you can tell us and then they will recalculate your budget and then they will stream in the middle of a five year period so keep track of that and make sure if anything changes that you let them know so they can change that for you so here's math to show you exactly what we're talking about here if your library is $3,500 square feet $3,500 times $4.50 it is $15,750 but we do have a $25,000 minimum so you can actually get $25,000 but if your library is bigger then you would get whatever that math came up to be now this is where it gets a little confusing you don't have $25,000 to actually use what they then do is they take whatever your e-rate discount percentages and apply that to this and that's the amount you get so they say you have $25,000 but in this case you have a 50% discount rate e-rate will just cover 50% of that so very similar to category one where it's your thing costs this much e-rate will go and cover 50% of that your budget is this much e-rate will give you 50% of that to use so in this case there's $12,500 it ends up being what you can spend on category two services during the current five-year period which we're in right now 2021 through 2025 so this is the basic starting of your calculation the e-rate is done in you have an online account that I'm going to show you how to look at and use in a bit here and they keep track of this for you which is great if you have an online account there's a place where you can look at your category two budget and as you use it to apply for and purchase things they will do the math and deduct from that automatically and show you what you have left to use throughout the five-year period so you don't have to keep track of this yourself somewhere in a piece of paper or in a spreadsheet it's kept track of on the USAC side as you apply alright we have any questions let's pause for questions here right now any questions about what you can receive a discount on available how all this funding works you can type into the question section of your go-to-webinar interface I see that here and I can answer any questions you have right now about what we've talked about so far I'll give you a minute to do that no problem if you have whenever you think of a question just go ahead and type in and you don't have to wait for me to ask so one other thing you do need to think about when it comes to doing e-rate is SIPA and filtering SIPA being the Children's Internet Protection Act and filtering talking about having some sort of a software program or something that blocks access to certain websites and certain sites on your computers because e-rate is federal funding you are required to be in compliance with SIPA for your internet connection and any of that equipment that is used to make the internet work SIPA only requires three things there is the filter itself the technology protection measure this can be software you install on individual workstations it can be something you do on your network it can be something your service provider provides from their end and before the internet even gets to your building it's already got filtering working on it in addition you have to have an internet safety policy something that talks about keeping and SIPA is specifically for children so it's about keeping minors safe and from any harmful information that they might come across on the internet you may have this already as part of your other policies of the library as part of your use policy or something internet use policy or computer use policy and that's fine it doesn't have to be its own special internet safety policy as long as you address the different things that SIPA wants you to somewhere in your library policies you've got that covered and then at some point you would have to have a public notification or meeting about the fact that you're doing this generally this would be an agenda item on a board meeting letting your community know we're talking about it, we're deciding we've picked this thing or we're investigating doing this something like that that's something you just do once so that's all the three things that you need USAC has information on their website about how SIPA works with it with e-raids now SIPA can be controversial topic for some people some staff, some library staff or boards are completely against filtering of any kind because they think it is censorship and they're about intellectual freedom and freedom of information everyone should be able to access whatever they want without chance of something being blocked all the way to the other extreme where you must protect the children at all costs and everything horrible must be blocked from anyone seeing it on the internet and anything in between for e-raid purposes I don't get into the philosophy of it I just get into what you need to do to be in compliance and meet your requirements SIPA can be can seem like it's intimidating or overwhelming but it's really not there's not much to it the whole act is about 14 pages long it is very simply written not a lot of detail for example it does not tell you these are the websites you might block there's no list of saying you have to block YouTube, you have to block Facebook the federal government has not said any of that it says you must block things that might be harmful to minors and they leave that up to you at the library in your community to decide what you think is harmful at what level you might how strongly you might filter something most filters have different levels strong, medium, lower specific websites you can allow or not allow so you can do it case by case and that's all up to you at the community level on how to do that it also states that for adults it also states that first that any computer that accesses the internet needs to have filtering on it so if you are having using e-rate money to get a discount on your internet service any computer that connects must be filtered not just the children's computers if you have those in a separate area even though this is about children it didn't get that specific so it's not it could have been better written so even your adult computers and your staff computers must be filtered as well however there is also a criteria in the act that states for adults who are doing bona fide research or work you must be able to turn off the filter so you install the filter everywhere either individually on a computer on routers or wherever and then for your staff computers turn it off for your adult computers if you want to turn it off and you're still in compliance with you just have had installed it at some point have your documentation showing that you've installed it and but then you turn it off on the ones that you don't actually want to be filtered or have anything blocked and you're good to go so a few things just to think about if you're iffy about SIPA and not sure about how I don't want to be blocking things and doing this remember there's things in there that will let you undo it that require that you are allowed able to turn it off so you don't block things we don't generally recommend specific filtering programs here from Lyra Commission there's just too many variables in your library but to tell you here's the one you should use I have information on our e-rate website about SIPA and suggestions recommendations for filters that you can look at and use but you could also talk to our IT person here, Holly Wolt or our technology innovation librarian Amanda Sweet here at the library commission either of them can consult with you on what might be a good filter in your situation so that's just one other thing you need to be aware of for your age now we're going to talk about the e-rate forms themselves getting into the nitty-gritty of how this all works as I said there are multiple forms throughout the year that you must submit the first three forms here everyone has to do all libraries have to do the last one the blends of blue there it depends on how you're going to receive your discount and we're getting into the much more detail about all of these as we go on today the first form which is available right now is your 470 where you're just reaching out and saying hey I'm looking for somebody to provide me with this service and I'd like to get the e-rate on it where you just go on it the 471 is the second form where you tell you SAC, hey I picked who I want to go with and the service that we're going to get after that form you SAC evaluates, reviews your application and lets you know if you're going to be approved or not and if you are then you do your 46 where you say thank you I like my money and my service has started and then the last step is your invoicing where you say I've paid my bills or I am paying getting my reimbursement you can receive discounts on your bills if you do that your service provider submits the 474 to you SAC and ask them to reimburse the provider for what they've discounted you if that's what you're doing you are done with the e-rate process after your 46 you just have to do those first three forms the service provider is responsible for asking for their money back from you SAC you aren't but if you aren't doing that and you're paying your bills in full and you want a reimbursement afterwards then you at the library do the 472 which they call the bear form the bill that to be application reimbursement form and then you do that form to receive the funding sent to you directly they do this is done by a direct deposit to your library's account or whatever bank account you indicate so you do have to submit one other form once the 498 to give them your banking information this is just like when you do direct deposit for your job and your salary put directly into your bank account you do that for this as well so you do that 498 one time so it's ready to go the other forms you do every year for every funding year and then of course the last one depending on how you're receiving your discount you would do it for the service provider and we're going to get into more details about all this work and now we're going to dig into each individual form a little later USAC does have a document retention policy you must keep copies of any e-rate paperwork for 10 years 10 years after the last date of service so that would be the end of a funding year so for the e-rate funding year we're applying for right now just 2022 you would need to keep everything related to this year through June 30th, 2033 10 years after the last date of service this would also account for any sort of contracts you might have signed previously to 2022 so you might have some sort of a contract where it's just a monthly one it always just keeps rotating going on and on you don't sign a new contract every couple of years or anything and you may have originally signed up with this company back in 2010 that contract still applies to 2022 internet so you need to keep that through June 33 as well so just keep depending on how you're having that how your internet set up you may have to keep things that are a lot older too for SIPA you just keep everything forever because it's going to apply to every single year you ever do e-rate if you can make sure that you can show them that you are in compliance the reason this is done the reason you need to keep things is because USAC can do what they call audits now this is not like an IRS audit where you've done something wrong and they're coming to figure out what you did wrong and get in trouble this is more of a they do a checks and balances type thing where they will randomly pick libraries and they want to evaluate and see did you understand the process did it work for you how did you do finding this form in that form and they can go back the FCC rules go back 10 years if they want you to look at what you had done so you need to be able to get to them anything they may ask for any sort of documentation now you don't need to have piles of paper all over the place or think binders or anything that you can have it either in electronic or paper format so if you don't want to have to have stack of papers for 10 years worth or file a cabinet tool of them just scan everything save it to a flash drive or somewhere folder on your computer wherever label it e-rate when the year 2022 everything is in there so if they ever look for it they can come you know if you have a place you can easily go to get it you just need to be able to get them whatever they want to have you whatever they want to look at so the kind of things you must keep is any forms or letters that you have received a form you submitted the letters you received from the SEC these letters are now sent all electronically to you so you'll have them in an email they're also in your e-rate account online any bids you've received any contact with service providers invoices receipts for anything that could be purchased for installation copies of any decision making you had to do where you decided who you're going to go with anything that has to do with it just make copies scan it do whatever you need to and just hold on so that you hold on to it for those 10 years so you make sure you can get to it whenever you SEC ask so I have been talking about the online e-rate account that you use and this is Epic the e-rate portal Epic is the e-rate productivity center acronym the letters BPC but it is pronounced Epic technically it could work in any browser it's just an online interface but they only guarantee that it will work in Chrome or Firefox just double checking something here so technically it can work in anything but you SEC only guarantees that it will work in Chrome or Firefox if you use other browsers things can not work directly you may thank you so much for having this happen but it really hasn't gone through you SEC has not received it things have happened so you must with the internet explorer you don't have to worry about any other kinds of browsers so use Chrome or Firefox to do your e-rate work Epic is one stop shopping for all of your e-rate program services that you need to do you can submit your forms there you SEC will reach out to you asking questions receive reminders, notifications, updates about things you can ask you SEC questions if you have questions about anything your e-rate forms is all there online in one place and this is the URL for it to get to the page usec.org e-rate now to log in to use the system you SEC creates an account for your organization which for you would be your library and then an individual person one person has to be identified as the account administrator the person who has all the ability to do everything in the account generally that would be maybe a library director or if you're looking to have a staff person that you've identified and indicated you're in charge of doing all the e-rate stuff account administrators can create additional users if you have more people, multiple people that you need to have access to your e-rate account and decide what level of permissions they can have a full user can do anything complete forms, file forms, certified forms which is signing up officially and submitting them to the user can just complete forms but not submit or certify this is mainly for larger organizations where you have multiple staff and like you told your tech person since you know all this internet stuff you submit, you complete the form but I'm the director and I'm the only one authorized to sign off on applying for this funding so they someone else would submit they can also update information about your organization about your library if you need to make changes to the library name or address or anything there's a view only option where they can see all the forms and things but can't enter anything and can't do anything, can't submit forms but they can also make those organizational changes only so this is the USAC main screen where you go to USAC their main web page usac.org slash e-rate and there's two sign in buttons there, one at the top that's always there in the top menu and then at the lower left there's another one on the main screen they both do the same thing, they both go to log you into your e-rate account so you can use either one to get into your to log in when you first log in when you hit that button you get this pop up that comes up first that tells you if this is your first time using this what they call their one portal system to log in you must do these steps here about resetting your password creating a new password now this is something that is very confusing can become confusing to some people and I want to be very clear here you only do this as I've highlighted here in red the first time you sign in here so if it's your very first time using Epic you have to um go through this forgot password process after you do that once the first time you don't have to do it every single time again you don't have to do it again you don't have to change your password every time you go and log into the system so after you do this once you then ignore those eight steps and you just when you hit sign in you just ignore all of that and just hit continue and actually enter your username and password that you've created so it is a little confusing um you do have to change your password every 90 days for security purposes but when you try to log in it will let you know when it's time to do that so you still just ignore all this don't try to have to keep track of those 90 days or whatever yourself every when you go and type in your username and password once something's expired and those pop up saying hey it's expired pick a new one so for the first time though you're going to hit continue and you see this is where you could enter your username and password but you're going to click this forgot password link um this is something you've probably used over the years many times uh I know I you know you forget you've got so many systems and so many places you log into that you uh don't remember what you create what your password was that you may have created um click on that forgot password link and then it will say um enter your username and we can send you an email you can reset the email your username is your email address whatever email address you have um given to usack to to be your main email so you um enter your email address there hit reset via email they then send you a usack password request email typical same as every other kind of um email resetting and then a link in there that you can click on to reset your password and you know this fires in one hour do you have an hour to go ahead and um do your reset your password once you do that then you go back to the screen to sign in don't worry about do that forgot password thing again hit continue and then enter the username and password you created and then you can log in so now every other time if you've done that forgot password only once you just go here and log in you ignore those eight steps and just hit continue uh you also click the box here to accept their terms and conditions and then hit find in click find in usack has also last year started doing multi-factor authentication this is something you may have used in many other programs as well where they send a code number typically to your telephone your cell phone maybe and then you use that number to verify an extra security verify that it's you I do not recommend using your personal cell phone for this because it's import related and you don't want to cross those kind of things together but they will do it to your email the email that you're using for your account here so you it's going to make you send an email authentication do the email authentication automatically pre fills in your email address you hit send email and then it will say a passcode has been sent to find email address and then this is where you enter it so you leave this up in your screen that says one time verification code and subject heading then there's a six digit number that you use and this is only good for 10 minutes note here and then it expired so I recommend that this is what I do myself whenever you get one of these after you've used that code go back to your email as soon as you can and delete this particular message that way you don't potentially use an old code in a future time you're trying to log in once you've used this and that 10 minutes has passed you can't use it again it's going to be a new code every time you go to log into the system so we're going to take that six digit code enter it hit verify and now we've gotten logged in there are two different options here in the center of the page here of what you can access there's at the bottom it's the second one is emergency connectivity fund this is a special program the FCC set up for help giving libraries and schools money to actually buy the devices a separate program of e-rate e-rates only about the service it is related to the COVID-19 pandemic in response to that so that program is done the money's been applied for but libraries are working on getting their funding so that's still there what you want is the e-rate productivity center for the e-rate program so click on that box you are logged into your applicant landing page and now this is the long page here and you're going to read all this but we're going to dig into some of the different parts of it so you'll get a little closer look in the middle here it says my entities and I want to show you I zoom into that this entity number this is also sometimes called your build entity number or your bin you'll see that somewhere this is a number that's assigned to your library by usac when you're first set up as an organization to do e-rate similar to like a social security number for person it's a number that always is associated with your library so whenever usac reaches out to you or contacts you or ask you for information they will always say what's your bin what's your build entity number even if your library's name changes if you have money donated you have to change it to something like lead something library that will always be the same entity number for your library also at the very bottom of the page there is this FCC forms and post commitment request section this is where you can look up any of your library or any of your e-rate forms that you've submitted I oftentimes very very often get questions from libraries saying can you tell me if I did this form did it get submitted did I miss something and where am I in the process you can look this up yourself right here in your account you can choose whatever form you want to look up for 70 for 71 for 86 and then what funding year it may you want to look at I did this example here for 2021 and I have two different ones here and those will be on the right the status one is incomplete and one is certified certified means it means it has been submitted you said has it you're done you submitted the form incomplete means you started working on it but you haven't finished it and it is still there waiting for you to work on or you didn't get something done so it hasn't actually been submitted I mentioned also that you said will send your notification your reminders about things this goes into a section called your news section in your account now you notice up here in this blue bar there's a news link this is news for every single applicant in the e-rate program if you click on that you will get everybody's information it's not very easy to navigate or use to find yours the way to get just your libraries news items and notifications is from here on your landing page underneath they use that logo here it says welcome in your library name to click on your library name and then this is your institutions info the whole bunch of menu things from items across the top here I'll mention here also that category to budget calculation I was mentioning earlier this is where you can always look up and see where you're at but for your news there's news section news item click on that and then you just receive your notifications you're just looking at your libraries updates and notifications and letters and anything they sent to you so don't ever click on this news up here the blue bar is too much it shows everything use the menu I've used your welcome link and do the news that's just for your library you will also notice there's a tasks item up here which you definitely should click on regularly to see what you have in your task this is where if you that if you started for me continue working on it keeps it here this first item here it says submitted and it's ready for certification so it's waiting for me to go in and certify and complete submitting it when you there's also something that can cause some annoyance if you don't keep up with things here whatever you start at form and I'm going to go in and see that we're actually doing when you'll see what it looks like you create a new form as soon as you hit the button saying I want to do a form before you've even entered any info into it it starts up a process task for you to work on that form it is to help you to remind you that you need to do this you sack will send you email notifications email reminders saying hey you need to work on this form and the wording of it I think is misleading and confusing it says create SEC form for 71 and it says that the email you'll receive too now this may make you think oh it's time is time for me to create one no what it means is you have created one and you need to continue and don't forget you need to you might want to continue working on it so the wording can use some work but this system that they have here built by this company APM it was not built from scratch for e-rate purposes it's for other things and some things they have to kind of work with what they got so if you receive emails saying you need to work on a form but you know you've done it you double check and make sure yeah I've already submitted that these are probably some that you started didn't finish money got distracted and pulled away or you clicked on it and realized oh wait I don't know what I'm doing close out and just let me close my browser and I'll come back to it but they're just kind of floating out there so regularly go here and see what you have and you can delete these you can discard these and I'll show you when we get into these forms where the button is to do that this is the email that I mentioned that they'll send to you reminding you hey you have this form out there and it will say new task create SEC form whatever very confusing makes you think you're due to do something no it just means you started a form and you're a little nudge to remind you don't forget to finish it so keep an eye on those tasks you see anything in here that you know doesn't need to be here click on it discard it and keep things cleaned up for yourself so another part of your account to know about is your user information this is you as an individual person using working on the library's account on the upper right here is a little head silhouette if you click on that this pops up this box and you can click on profile for your profile information this is also where you have your sign out button so when you're done you can log out of the system when you click on that it brings you to your profile and there's these buttons right here in the second say edit but there's this big red notice that says please don't use your buttons use the manage epic user profile button on the upper right so one of those things didn't work exactly how they wanted them to so they had to give you a note so if you just click on these here they don't actually do anything use the button on the upper right to manage your user profile and this is where you can change all the information about yourself if your name, phone number, address anything related to you you'll know you cannot change your username or email address once you give them an email address to use that is locked in however you may need at some point to change that and I'll show you in a second here how you can do that you can also add other users work on other if you're other people who have created accounts for in here this is the person you as the account administrator up here in the upper right on your landing page is all the different menu items for different things you can do and manage users is one of those options you will select your library by checking in the box this may seem weird to have to choose yourself from a list of just yourself your own library but this is for there you know there are school districts with multiple locations multiple schools libraries with multiple branches they would have all of those listed here and have to pick the correct one pick the one that you are actually at but for us for just single libraries we just pick ours we could add and remove existing ones or we can create a new one so I'm going to show you how to do that here from scratch you just get a blank information put in the person's name title this is where you then enter email address to create account for the first time for someone when you do this this person will be sent an email saying hey the account's been created for you they will then have to click on that email and go to that first time process of forgot password and setting themselves up to use the system and then below further down this page is this from user permissions I was talking about earlier where people have different ability to do different things and in the system and you can see you can make it specific to certain forms to that they can do some forms but not other ones or you can do it across the board for all of them whichever works for you whatever you need your other people to be able to do now I mentioned that once you have your email address locked in here you cannot change that afterwards you may need to at some point change who the cat administrator is to another person generally this would be a new director is coming to the library and now they're going to be in charge of the rates handed over to them if you are having a transition of directors and they're giving the new directors being given all of the passwords and everything is very easy you can log in here and you're the account administrator and you can make this this swap to the new person if the email address is a generic email address that your library uses like so-and-so public library at Gmail and that's the director's email then all you need to do is go in and go into the user account using that little head up here and just change the name make it your the new director's name easy peasy but if it's a new email address like it is specific to a person's name like first name, last name at library.org and the new director's email address is going to be different than the old one then you're going to need to make a transfer the account transfer your function to a different user the way to do this is you go in and make a new account you can use your account like what I just showed you for the new director and then hand over from the old to the new now if you don't have the login info for the old director that you know there wasn't it just didn't have everything to give you so you can't get into the account administrator's account to do this hand over and everything that's okay you can just contact use that they have an 800 number for their customer service and they will and you just call them and say hey I'm the new director I need to do e-rate and I don't have any of the old person's kind of login info so I need to start the scratch and they will work with you to create you a user account in the library's organization account but to do this handing over if you can do that we go in from the way we did for looking at news you click on the library's name where it says welcome and there's some buttons across the top here and on the right there's going to be these three dots button and it opens up this pull down and you're going to want to modify account administrator and the general contact and I'll show you once you click on that you'll see it's going to list down here at the bottom all the different user accounts that are available this is something I had to do for myself when I got married and changed my name five years ago my email address at the state changed as well so I had to change my email address on my account in here but as I told you you can't change the email address so I had to kind of fake it by creating a second account for myself and then handing over the administrator control from my old email address crystal dot burns to my new one crystal dot quarter so I've created a second account for myself I go in here change the box to the quarter one hit continue and it says here's the current one here's what it's going to be it's going to change from crystal dot burns to crystal dot quarter and submit and then also do the same thing under general contract contact you have to do the account administrator and the general information as well because there's different purposes that they use that for sending emails to you the same thing change it from burns to the quarter one and hit continue so depending on how what access you have to a previous person's information if you need to do a hand over you may need to do this or you may need to call you may need to just create a new user the whole new email address and then hand over switch the administrator's account and get general contact or you may need to call us back and say hey I'm new I have no access to anything and they will help you do that no problem now for your library's info there is a specific time when you can do this and a certain time when you can't make changes to library's info the time when you can do this is called the administrative window so you can update all of your information before the main processes for e-rate start in next year it's open right now open in October October 26th and it will close a little before the funding year filing window opens for form 471 and this is something we'll get into the first form 471 the second form the process when you're going to tell you what to do you pick there's only a certain amount of time when you can do it it's a couple of months and it's called the filing window for the 471 when that filing window opens all of this information about your library needs to be locked down and unchangeable because once you start submitting that you are saying here's what something costs what the calculation is now do the math so tell me so you can know how much discount you're going to receive so those numbers can't be changed your school lunch numbers all of this square foot is a library for category 2 all of that has to be unchangeable once you start submitting to USACS here's what I've done here's what I want to go with so that's why they have this window of time when you can make those changes and then at a point when it's locked down you can't make anymore just all that information is correct about your library pop in there see what it says and make sure everything is correct right now so to do your changes to your library's info as opposed to your personal info you're going to manage organization same thing you check your library name then you do manage organization and this is the live information about your library now this is a very long page and I've broken it up to each of the sections so you can zoom in and see all of it here so you can change the library's name if you have somebody like I said donated money and it's changed you can update that address your urban and rural status if you think it needs to be changed this lattice and longitude used to be used for keeping track of rural status and things but as you can see it's not required in the asterisk so things that aren't required you can just leave like next section below that is other ways they could contact you alternate phone number email as you can put in there and then basic information about your library if you're a public library and main branch those are the two basic things you should always have checked because you're the only branch but you're the main anything else here that might apply to you do you have a book in the field, you have a kiosk something like that you can check off as well and then below that the very last section is this is where you enter that square footage for doing your category 2 budget information so if you're ever thinking about applying for category 2 make sure you go in and check here and make sure that's got the correct number there so that when you do apply it can do the math and the calculation based on that number you've entered there this is also where your school district it will pop up for figuring out your discount calculation if it's not here or you think it's the wrong one there is a search feature to look up a different school district and FCC registration number this is a number required to do business on the FCC and there's links on our e-rate website where you can look that up for your library or apply for one alright so that is everything in your account your user information, your library information does anybody have any questions now about anything that I've covered so far next we are going to get into the actual form the first form the 470 I'm going to do a screenshot demo of how that all works so do you have any questions about anything that I've mentioned yet up till now about what's in your app account how to use it what you can apply for what the discounts are anything like that that you want to ask go ahead and type into the questions section of your go to webinar interface let's go on to our form our actual forms here the first form in the e-rate process is the 470 this form is officially to open a competitive bidding process and that may seem a little intimidating but that's ok we will get into it that all means it's not nearly as scary as it sounds this is where you say what you're looking for, what services you want to receive what type of library you are, what you're looking for out there so do you want to get an e-rate discount on my monthly internet bills, do you have equipment on buy, what do I want to buy all of that everyone is required to do this to start the process except for a couple of exceptions if you are in the middle of a multi-year contract, so specifically a contract with a beginning and an end date so it starts on this date and ends here, many times service providers will say if you lock in inside a 3-year contract with us or a 5-year contract with us will give you this really good rate for that entire time so they lock you in for definitely being their customer for that amount of time so if you have that kind of thing where the contract is going to end and then after that you'll have to sign a new contract to start the next cycle you do not file a 470 every year of that contract, only the first year when you're reaching out to get that service you don't want to open up bidding again for something you've already contracted with a company for, that would be bad so if you're in one of those middle years of your multi-year contract you do not do the 470 at all what you do is you skip and you wait until the 471, the second form of the process which usually comes out and comes up in the spring and just let you do that one every year, just letting you right know, yes I'm still that company yes I'm still that company, so you do that every year also if you can get this deal here USAC says you do not need to do a competitive bidding they've been trying to encourage service providers to provide really good service speed at a really reasonable rate so they said the rules they're not saying that if you can get $300 a month or less for 100 megabits per second then you do not have to do competitive bidding you found a really good cost effective service and you can just go with it same thing here, you just wait until the 471 and submit that saying hey here's what we found, here's what it's going to cost and it meets all these criteria you can also include installation, something new that you'll be getting as well so to do your 470 here on your landing page in the upper top menu here you start with the link for the FCC form 470 and as soon as you click that this is what I'm talking about a task has been created I've done nothing yet here, I haven't entered anything I haven't hit save to do anything but as soon as I click that FCC form 470 link on this landing page a task has been started and it will start reminding me don't forget work on this form even if I decide at this point I'm not ready, I don't have all my info I've been interrupted, I can't do this right now I just click on my browser that task is out there so go in here if you've got one of these floating around and there is your discard form button on the lower left click on that to delete any forms that you don't really need to be floating around there so much again to do the form though we do enter a nickname here, you can have this be anything you want it's just for your own purposes to keep track of which form this is it will come up whenever you're getting notified of questions so here I just did it for last year FY 2021 470 and then save and continue save and share button there that would be for those purposes when I was telling you if you had someone else who had to actually submit the form and do the certification that is what you would send this off to somebody else who has a user account in the system or if it's just you doing your rate and you submitting this you just do save and continue this next screen here is just showing you the basics about your entity about your library double check all this if any of it needs changing go back out go into your managed organization and update all of that you can see here we now also have a back button so throughout this different steps to this form you can always go back one step at a time across the top here you see there's a blue bar that will move along each section of the form so you can see where you are but you can always go back back back if you think you need to change something and you can always discard at any time too but we're going to save and continue and go on I was going to say argue the main contract person if you are you say yes if no you can enter someone else's but if you say yes it just pops in your user info automatically save and continue and then I can choose what services we're going to ask for one you can do a fc a form 470 for category 1 just for category 2 or both on one form 470 if you want to for this example I'm doing both all together in one and we save and continue if you you can also use an RFP or a quest for proposal if you need to you have a really complex project that you're doing like special construction that needs a lot of detail you have a multi-page document that explains here's everything we need you can upload that and use that in your application as well there is some there's a section here where you can write a little narrative in the form but it's pretty small you'll get a lot of detail much easier to write a word document or write something else and just attach it to your 470 and then what you do in the form you say go look at that that's got all the details you need to know so if you do want to you can upload that here and attach it or you can say no if you're not and then save and continue and now we start entering our service requests the specific information about what we're looking to receive an e-rate discount on our monthly internet, our equipment, whatever so we do the add new service request button and at this point here is where things have changed in the form from previous years so if you've done an e-rate before this is where you start thinking it's going to be different they've done kind of a menu system here where they help you guide you in digging down into the different sections of what you might request so your first choice is I am looking at seeking bids for internet access or data, transmission or category 1 network equipment or maintenance operations so this would be for your special construction or we're going to just do a basic internet access our monthly internet costs when you click on that there are some choices bids for internet access with any combination so this first choice here is for pretty much any kind of connection you might have and you can see it lists fiber, non-fiber, cable, DSL, copper, etc, etc so any sort of internet connection you might get internet access without data transmission and then data transmission only without internet access these are mainly for, there's some larger organizations that have to purchase these two things kind of separately here, most of us small independent libraries don't need to worry about that and you do also have the ability to build your own network pretty sure none of us want to do that so we're going to not do that we're going to choose the first option there just give whatever kind of internet services are out there and then this choice is once you choose that I am looking for the service either by one provider or a bundled package or data plans or wireless adapters which are air cards from mobile devices this is mainly used for things like it could be on a bookmobile or there are some rural areas in the country that still do not have broadband and they have to use wireless to get the internet you will if you do need to do that you will have to confirm and prove to use that will ask you is there no other traditional internet provider that can provide you broadband internet why are you using a data plan you have to prove that there's nothing else available that's the only internet service available in your community so we're going to do this as the first choice I just want to go with a traditional internet provider and then it will ask us to give some details once you've made those choices quantity is how many internet connections you want to the building number of entities we're just a single entity one library are you looking for installation that would depend if this is you're just doing an e-rate application and I want to just get a rate on the service I'm already getting I already have and I'm just continuing it for each year you don't need that installed again so you would say no but with something new you would say yes if you did have an RFP this is where you would check to make sure that it is going to be included with this particular request and then you're going to want to ask for your speed what speed do you want maximum speed for doing the 470 I always tell libraries this is your dream think big what would you love to have is a speed you don't want it to be too small arrange here so you want to think you don't know what might be available out there so for maximum go big one gigabit five gigabits you never know what might be available if you don't ask you don't get it also if you limit this to too much like if you say I want 25 megabits per second minimum and only 50 megabits maximum because that's what I get right now and a company comes to you and say actually we can offer 100 megabits per second now we can offer a higher speed that's great but because of your 470 you said the max you wanted was 50 you're only going to get an e-rate discount on half that speed half the cost not the full cost of the 100 so think big you're not committed to anything on the 470 this is putting out feelers is this available how much could I get when you do your 471 the second form is when you say this is what I actually ended up with and what I'm actually picking so make sure this range here is as big enough as to include anything you might potentially get as a response and you might not know what the response is so think as big as you can and then we save the request this pops us back to our screen restart and you see it started a table here with what we're looking for we can add another request if we want to I'm going to do one here to add in that dark and lit fiber I'm seeking internet access and data transmission and in this case I go with the third option the purchase data transmission service only not including internet access and you'll see here the second choice mentions the dark fiber strand so this is when you're going to come to a feeler and see is there any dark fiber out there available that I could get and have turned on and use for my fiber connection you'll note here it does include lit and dark together and you have to do both all the little asterisks is everywhere our quantity is for both just one internet connection our number of entities is over here on the left just one our RFP is over there do you want this installed yes this is something new you're getting and then same thing for speed think big one gigabit five gigabits whatever and then save this request and now you can see we've got for our category one our basic internet service any particular type of connection we can get and then looking to see if there's any least dark or lit fiber available out there this is the narrative I was talking about there's a little box here that you could type some details in I just wrote in this case 60 RFP I did attach here but you can put some short information in there if you wanted to there's also a question about installment payment plans if it is some large project you need to space out your payments for what you're responsible for you could do that so you could say yes or no and then save and continue when we're done adding all of our different service requests we save all of our category ones because I did select category two it popped us over to now doing all your category two requests this is your internal connections on your equipment but it works the same way as the category one add a new service request same kind of thing it has a menu here you can see bits for equipment needed the basic maintenance of that equipment and operating that service so you can do as I mentioned before you can do the equipment and automatically add in the basic maintenance you may already have the equipment but you just want to do a request for just the maintenance on it so you could do just a basic maintenance one here we're going to go through and do we want to buy some equipment and we want to make sure it gets maintained so this only has one choice I seek bids for equipment but then you've got this pull down menu of all the types of equipment that you could ask for so your cables, racks, switches wireless access points power supplies etc so for the first example here I picked cabling so the cable that I need in the units here is feet I want a thousand feet to run through my new library or my new computer room I don't know if that's the right amount but that's just my example you can also choose a specific manufacturer if you know of one you don't have to you can just leave this up to the service provider but if you have a preference you can you'll know it does say or equivalent it has every single one of these you definitely want that included there because if they can't use this particular manufacturer they need to have the ability to use someone else or some other brand and if you don't have that or equivalent it will not you won't be able to get the e-rate discount so to eliminate that issue they automatically says always are equivalent you are one entity yes I would like someone to install this I don't know anything about running cable and if I had our feet now here is that button I was talking about that please select this option if you would like to create an accompanying category 2 and B M I C is the accurate abbreviation acronym for basic maintenance of this internal connection request so check that box it automatically just takes them into the top and fills it in down there so now in one shot here I'm saying I want the equipment and I want the basic maintenance upkeep of that I save and now I've got two items come into the table for category 2 the equipment itself and the basic maintenance of it and then you can see all the details here now if I want some other pieces of equipment I can just add the service request and keep adding them as I want as I other things I might be buying this next year now this is up to you about what you want to buy in each year of that five years that you have available to use you don't have to do it all at once you can some libraries do I'm updating all my switches this year so just buying like three switches and then next year I'll buy some new routers and the year after that will appear the cable one so you can spread it out that using that budget over multiple years if you want to or do it all at once maybe you're building a library or a new or just updating your computer lab whatever for this I've gone through and I've done a bunch of that additional months I'm not gonna show you doing all those because they all work the same way as long we just saw but in the end you'll end up with this long list if you did multiple ones of each piece here I did I needed it wanted a router and it's basic maintenance I would like to buy three new wireless access points and I need a new switch too and all the basic maintenance is long for those so I have a little narrative down here if I wanted to enter any more information in there or I could have attached RFPs depends so once I've got everything listed here that I wanted to category two and I'm done adding services I go down and save and continue it will then ask me if I have a technical contact anyone who I want to there's someone else at the library or someone else in the community who is the techie person that I would prefer these service providers to talk to rather than me because I don't know the answers to the questions and they would do it better if there's not and it's just you you would say no but if it is you can have give them a user account or have a need to be in your e-rate system if they don't need that they just are there to answer calls and questions you can just enter it manually and that's what I've done here entered in the contact info on the name of my tech person and then save and continue if there are any state or local rules about competitive bidding if you have any of this in your town or municipality you would have to know that and you would say yes and then you can upload the document if the document you do that or link to something I'm just saying no we don't have anything statewide that would apply to this and now that's everything entered into the form and we can now review it to see how it all looks when you hit that review form 470 button it is now on the USAC server side it's working on creating and generating a PDF that you can look at and look over it says here when it's ready a task will become available click up here in the tasks to go to it now this can actually take a minute or two like literally 30 seconds 60 seconds 90 seconds to generate and you may click on tasks and don't see it there yet just refresh your page keep doing that every 20 30 seconds or so and eventually it will pop up it does take an actual bit of time to create that PDF it's not instantaneous but once you do check on there click on there once you see the one that says certify and that's there and it's ready for you to actually finish the last step in the process so click on certify and it will give you now a link to download it to open up and look at it as a PDF and you'll notice there's the certification buttons over here and this one is not a bright blue it's kind of light blue you can't use it yet you have to check in this box to certify that everything in the PDF is correct before it will let you go on to certification this send for certification this is also confusing I think send for certification that is sending to someone else another user in your account this is what I was talking about with if one person is allowed to complete the information but only another person a different person is the only one authorized to submit that's the certifying part actually signing off on all the legal stuff that's what you would do but if you're just the one person who does it, you just continue you don't have to look at this PDF if you don't want to and if we just fill all this in and we know it's all good you can just check the box and go on but if you do want to look at it you just click on it and it opens it up and as a PDF it says draft on the top of every page and it just shows you everything that you entered in the form for your reference but if we're sure everything is correct then we check in the box you'll notice the light blue becomes dark blue and we can actually click on this continue to certification button it says are you sure you want to go yes we do and then this is all the legal stuff that you have to agree to you have to check every single one of these boxes for what you've finished certifying and submitting the form you'll notice at the bottom the certify button once again is a light blue and it's not going to be clickable I'm going to zoom in here to show you this is just all the legal things you have to do this you promise that you will follow all the e-rate rules that you've done everything correctly and you have to check every single box once you have checked every single box the blue button the certify button will become clickable and you'll click it and it will say are you the scary legal legal thing comes up saying that false statements may result in civil liability or prosecution I'm sure you guys aren't doing anything the legal the e-rate click yes and then it's done and it pops you back to your tasks where you started that certification and your 470 is submitted yay now if you wanted to now if you want to get the final version of this in a pdf many people do like to have their own copy of it even though it's here in the system you feel safer having your own either printed out or downloaded and saved on your computer this is where I say I recommend going to this pdf not that you don't want the draft one because that's your draft you have the final one that says you've actually submitted it so go back to our landing page anywhere where you see this usec logo you can click on and it'll bring you back to your landing page I'm going to go down to the very bottom of the page where we do that search for fcc forms and we'll look for our 470 and for the funding year that we're doing and look at the status here once it says certified you can go and get the pdf it may take just like their pdf for the draft it can take some time for this status to be updated and actually in the system I most often I go to this too quickly and I get over here and it says incomplete and I panic a little because but I just did the 470 I know I did that's okay same as before your task just refresh the page run the search again run the search again it may take 30 seconds a minute eventually it will come up saying certified and then you know it's been submitted click on the nickname this is a hot link here and that brings you to the form on line but up here at the top there's a generated documents link and this is where you can get the pdf you click on original version and it opens up looks very similar just doesn't say draft at the top and at the bottom there's all the certifications that you agreed to and at the very bottom is your signature where it lists you and the actual time step of the date and time that you submitted the form this is important because as I mentioned you do have to wait those 28 days before you can go on to do the second form in the process that's when you submitted this starts off that whole timing once you have and then that pdf you can save download print out whatever you like to do with your copies of these once that's submitted you receive a receipt notification in your newsfeed you can make changes if you need to to the form if you realize oops I made mistakes I forgot to do part whatever you can do that and it also tells you what is the what they call that allowable contract date that's the date 28 days after the 470 is submitted that's the earliest that you can do 4701 you can make your decision and make your choices you have to give the FCC rules say you have to give 28 days amount of time for companies to reach out to you so this is your in your news item when you look for your own news and right there is the allowable contract date so you know when you can go on to the next step alright excuse me alright anybody have any questions so 470 submitted they may have any questions about the 470 any parts of it things you can apply for go ahead and type into the questions section so after you have submitted your form 470 you have opened up your competitive bidding process and what is this what is competitive bidding competitive bidding is a formal process to pick what service providers you're going to go to and decide what products you're going to receive may sound a little intimidating but it's not nearly as bad as as I mentioned earlier you do have to give at least 28 days from the date you submit your 470 for this competitive bidding to happen and this is the time for service providers to see what you asked for send you their bids reach out to questions you can look at the offers compare them and look at them and then select the most cost-effective bid for yourself so before you can make your final decision though you're going to wait those 28 days but you may receive bids may receive questions and you are able to answer those throughout the 28 days or even after if you want to you must during your competitive bidding process have what they call a fair and open bidding process this means that you cannot have any vendor give any vendor extra information all of them must be treated the same and have access to the same info so if one vendor asks you a question that maybe affects how other vendors may respond and you've been in contact with other vendors you have to make sure that you update them with new information as well vendors cannot be involved in your 470 in writing that submitting that or putting the information in there you have to that would be if you can't reach out to some company and say hey I want to do e-rate and I'm going to be submitting a 470 what should I put in the form that you all offer you cannot do that you can contact, look at company's websites see what's out there to get an idea you can talk to some IT people if you're at the commission or your own people you can contact a vendor and just ask what they offer but you cannot mention it in context of doing e-rate and I need to know what to put in my form you can just say hey I'm interested in what your services are and what your costs might be or what you have available if you want to get an idea ahead of time you can do that but they cannot be involved in deciding what you're going to have actually on your 470 you also must choose what is the most cost effective bid out of everyone if you do receive multiple bids and cost being with cost being the primary factor now as you've probably experienced in life cost effective doesn't always mean cheapest we've all bought the cheapest thing because we thought that would be a great idea and it turns out not so good in the end and that's okay you have a real document how you do this, how you determine what you think is the most cost effective bid and I have an example here from the rate of a bid evaluation that you can use if you want to if you do have multiple vendors contact you offering you with the same service you can use this if you want to as a way of comparing and contrasting them deciding who to go with now per EU SEC rule per FCC rules price has to be the primary factor but that doesn't mean the biggest 50% of your decision making just has to be the primary, the price so here what I've done is that I think and you could have this be anything for something different you want to put in here the things that I'm going to use the criteria I'm going to use to decide if I like this vendor over a different one they have ability to earn up to 100 points and I've given price 30 points it's worth more points in total than anything else that makes it the primary factor and then everything else I've decided they get the certain amount prior experience with a vendor could be I know them and I've worked with them before could be I've never heard of them could be I know them and I know they're not how they do their invoicing if they're local and if they're in an environment whatever you think is important to you you can have your criteria and then after those 28 days are over you can then see look at the different bids you've gotten and assign the points appropriately and see what you come up with and you'll see here in this example two the cheapest one because they earned a full 30 points for price being the best price is not the actual best choice when it comes to being the most cost effective and everything else is important to you vendor three ended up with 92 points and you can see the big important part here was prior experience with this vendor it may be my current vendor it may be somebody I know in town whatever vendor two even though they're cheapest they had in prior experience that could be their new never heard of them before there's some company I don't know or it could be I do know them and I have the experience or knowledge that they have really bad customer service so I don't want to go with them whatever the reasoning is all of these things are subjective what you think about them some of these things are subjective actually being local we're not in price isn't but that can be your you know it's not all just kind of dry so in this case I'm going to go with vendor three as far as and then if you do have to do this kind of thing and do a comparison you're going to want to save this you need documentation showing why you chose one vendor over another this is because vendor two here who knows that they may know I know them the cheapest they could come back to you or they could go to USAC and say hey I know on the cheapest how could they possibly choose another company that that's not right can't be correct you have this showing why you chose and why they weren't selective and you're good that covers you you don't have to worry about any haven't done anything wrong e-ray purposes this is something you would save and keep also for those the 10 years to just in case now there's some situations that you don't always you're not always going to have some competition either so this is only if you have multiple bids for the same thing now some special cases that you might encounter well if you have an existing contract you already have a contractor and list of the company you're doing e-rate for the first time and you want to you don't want to open up a new bidding process and start from scratch but you want to start doing e-rate you do your 470 for whatever the services you're looking for as usual wait your 28 days but then you use whatever your current contract is as one of your bids responses if you have multiple you have to can then compare it to the other ones hopefully your current bid comes up with the most points obviously they do well in that category of prior experience and any other things and then your existing contract can be the one bid and now you can go on with who we're going with another question of what if the city pays for the library's internet the library doesn't pay for it themselves you can still do e-rate just because the city is paying for it does not mean you can't do e-rate you just have to allocate out the part that is the library's internet as opposed to every other department's internet so you have to separate be able to somehow know which part which how much of the internet is used by the library or the library is responsible for or the library pays the city for in some way you can have an estimate of use you might have actual statistical data that shows here's the internet connection and this much goes to city hall this much goes to fire department and this much goes to the library and then you just apply for e-rate on the amount that goes to the library your bill might be able to be separated out from the provider showing how much cost each each and each location is costing is using so you have natural monetary number so you can totally do e-rate even if the city is paying for it just as long you just have to be able to know which part of that internet yet is the library's responsibility other what the library is using have to be able to do that and what if you have only one bid or zero bid that's okay you don't actually have to have a competitive bidding process if there's only one company in town do you go with and that's fine just get yourself a note or email or something saying this is the only company in town or this is the only one that contacted us and that's why we're going if you didn't receive any bids nobody contacted you and it's after your 20 days then you can reach out to companies and say hey reach out to vendors and let them know hey I know you're out there and I did an e-rate application can you please send me something so I can potentially use you your current provider sometimes assumes you're just going to continue with them and they don't always proactively respond to these shoot them a little email or phone call just confirming they're still doing it they still want to do e-rate just to document that everything is still going to be going on as as it has been so once you wrap up your competitive bidding or after your allowable contract date you can close the competitive bidding process you can pick a particular date and say as of this date I'm not looking at any other bids as long as it's past those 28 days you can say this date I'm done even if something comes in after that someone responds late if you the applicant to decide this is my process and you came in July I've already made my choice but you evaluate your bids you pick your going with you sign a contract or an agreement whatever they need and then you go on to the second step of the process which is submitting the 471 but as I mentioned earlier only you can only do your 471 during your application filing window which will open sometime earlier early in the next year so what could potentially happen is you do your 470 if you get on it pretty early in the process in September, October you submit it, you wait your 28 days you've got your bids, you've made your choice that's great you have to wait though till the 471 is available in after January from the beginning of the year through the second step of the process so there's a lot of submit, submit and wait in e-rate so the second form in the e-rate process you do form 471 and you must do this one you do have to do it every single year and you use this form to tell you which company you've picked and what services you're going to get from them and how much it's going to cost your discount calculation is included in here now on this form and you certify doing all the rules at this point you can talk to your service provider about the fact that you're doing e-rate in fact you're probably going to need to to make sure you have all the information you need from them to tell you SAC what you're actually going to get from the provider so at this point once you have decided on who you're going with then they can help you fulfilling the information of 471 putting in the right equipment they might need to be getting for you putting in the right range speeds and the cost of the internet service anything else that you might need to enter that they would know also you want to talk to them about what you want to receive your discount your desired invoicing do you want discounts on your bills or do you want to pay in full and get reimbursed afterwards make sure you have that conversation with them especially if you have discounts on your bills so that they go out now when can you file the form this is a very important reminder I know I've mentioned this a lot but you have to wait the 28 days if you jump ahead and it hasn't been the 28 days normally you will be denied and you will be knocked out or get an e-ray at all for the next funding year so I cannot stress enough do not do it too early you can still submit your 471 or your 470 during the filing window of the 471 the 471 filing window usually goes from mid-January to mid-March so about three months worth and there's 28 days within there the question many libraries ask me is what's the deadline for the 470 well the deadline the 470 would be whatever is the end date of the filing window back up 28 days that's the latest you can possibly submit a 470 and still have 28 days before submitting your 471 if you're going to do on the very last day so you can be doing your 470 still in January, February potentially just make sure you wait those 28 days and make sure you do it until plenty of time for that deadline of the end the close of the 471 filing window so with 28 days sign some sort of agreement so before doing the 471 you do have to agree that you're going to go with this company in a contract you can have a clause and we do recommend this if it's something you're concerned about that process this agreement will not go forward unless we are approved for e-ray funding for things like major construction products like special construction we definitely recommend that as being a clause in your contract you do have to sign something with them but you can have this kind of criteria but if we don't get e-ray we can't afford this so the whole thing is not going to happen and then you do have to wait for that filing window we do not know what the filing window date is yet there are specific dates each year but USAC doesn't usually announce them until later in December near the end of December look for notifications from me I will send it on our e-mails it will come out from USAC it will be on our websites of what the filing window dates are so then you'll know what you're talking about for ultimate deadlines for the upcoming funding year what's nice that USAC does do now they send you, they proactively send you an e-mail letting you know when your allowable contract date has been reached and this goes directly to your e-mail address this is not something just in your e-mail account they have to log in check and see if you've gotten it's been sent it is sent to you right to your e-mail address and it says the allowable contract date has been reached you and now close your competitive process and work on the order making your choices and deciding to be able to do your 471 so look for this e-mail before you even decide to finalize anything you should get something from USAC those 28 dates it is also entered into your news section in your e-mail account as well everything is in there but I think it's really nice and helpful now that they send this I've always got libraries saying I don't know what my date is I can't remember has it come up yet just wait and you'll get an e-mail from USAC saying you're good to go go on to the next step so do your 471 it is up here in the top menu items as well the filing window is not open right now so I can't actually get screenshots and show you step by step how to do it however on the USAC website they have really good videos and this is what I really depend on for myself and for you step by step showing how to do a lot of these forms and they update them every year internally they're able to put these together so I highly recommend you go and watch their videos if you want to know how to do these forms that I don't have screenshots of the whole process they're very similar though the 471 there is some specifics though about the 471 that I want to highlight to bring your attention when you are in there that you think you should need to be aware of first for the 471 you must file a separate one for each category of service so for category one if you're doing both category one and category two you want to receive funding you're going to have to do two 471 you were able to do them both together in one 470 but when it comes to the 471 this is where it's going to be deciding what your discount is going to be and how much funding you're going to get and because the category one is done with just a basic here's your discount you get that amount off and category two uses that budget calculation they have to be done separately so that the system will do the math differently so if you're doing both categories in the same year you will have to do two for 471 also there are two steps a two step process for adding all of your information into your funding requests within this with the 470 you saw we did a service request and just in one shot we have to enter all the details with the 471 you enter all the details about what you're getting but then you've got a second step where you have to enter the amount it's going to cost the line item information that is what that's called oftentimes this is where people kind of lose it they do their funding request they see it comes up in that little table and they say under the next part of the form and it throws out errors it says it can't submit it and it's because you haven't gone into that item now and added in the monetary amount the cost so one way to remember this is if I haven't entered a money amount yet I haven't finished doing this form that's why I'm getting the errors so it is a little more detailed you've got to do that extra step than when you do the 470 so you do your step one adding if it's your monthly internet access if it's your yeah special construction for your category 2 one you'd enter different funding requests for each piece of equipment that you're doing and then once you have them in a table you click on them again and it will ask you for the more detailed information of exactly how much it's going to cost if you submit your 471 just like the 470 you'll get a receipt of acknowledgement that in your Epic account in your news section you can make some minor changes or corrections if you need to typo or a math error or something this is what's also great about e-rate is even after you submitted both the 470 and the 471 it's not in stone you can make fixes or change corrections if you realize that something went wrong you can also outright cancel a form and redo a whole new one if you want to you just contact us and say I don't want to use that 470 or that 471 it's wrong can you cancel it and I'll do a whole fresh one and that's perfectly fine you can also do some changes if you realize the cost was wrong or different but you can only reduce funding and not increase it if you're making a change if you realize you do need to do an increase because you did it wrong this is that would be a case of contact us act please cancel that 471 I have to do a whole brand new one and they will do that go through that process for you and here is your seat acknowledgement letter in your account just showing you everything and you've got some links here where you can see what the form actually looks like so after your 471 is submitted then your form goes to application review this is where the program integrity assurance department that part of use act PIA review looks at your application and then they check and make sure everything is correct are you eligible or the service is eligible did you enter all the right information then they reach out to you with questions you'll receive an email saying they have an inquiry and they generally get 14 days for you to reply so make sure you do this is a point where you will more likely than not reach out to me for help as well and that's what I'm here for absolutely they generally send these long documents that are very convoluted to ask a very simple question and I can translate from use act ease as I like to talk to describe it to English and explain to exactly what they're looking for what more information do they need sometimes they want to help you fix the mistake you made they realize oh you said this in the 470 but this in the 471 and they don't match up will give you a chance to fix that some mistakes you miss you're not totally just knocked out you made a mistake they want to give you this money they want to help you get through it get through the process so they may end up saying hey I noticed this looks a little wrong let's fix it this review process so many applications they get can sometimes take months to go through is not instantaneous they've got so many applications to do and sometimes months being they don't even get to an application after the funding year officially starts some people don't hear back from PIA review about their application answer until August September October November and yes that is past the beginning of the funding year which is July 1st however that's okay even if you don't hear from them until later in the year and you're in the funding year you will receive your full discount going back to July 1st you just get a big credit on your bills if you're doing that so you do also need to then be prepared to potentially pay your bills in full just in case USAC doesn't get to approving it until later in the fall so if you're usually receiving discounts on your bills until they've approved that your provider won't continue discounting them after the funding year starts they've got to wait for each year to be approved when you are approved the USAC sends a funding commitment decision letter this is still called a letter because they have that acronym but it's not a mail letter that's sent in the mail it's actually emailed to you and this will tell you if you've been funded or not if it's been reduced for whatever reason you might receive more than one of these for example if you did more than one 471 because you did category 1 category 2 so keep your eyes open to make sure you have them both and you can file an appeal if you want to if you are denied or if they reduce your funding for some reason and you don't agree with their decision you can do that there's information on the e-rate website about how to do that and I can help you with that too if you need I've done that a couple of times over the years with some libraries to submit appeals and then get them their funding so this is an email that's as I said sent directly to you not just in your Epic account and it will say in the subject USAC funding commitment decision letter available the email in its email itself doesn't say what they've said there's attachments so it will be a PDF that has you but approved or not but this also then does tell you what you can do with your next steps and the next form is doing your 486 so it doesn't tell you this is the next form you do in the process the 486 letting you know that you do want to receive your funding this is a PDF it's the funding commitment decision letter you can see how much it was committed to you and also in the letter itself and also this here's your next steps in the next form you have to do there's information about how to request how to submit an appeal if you need to and then some specifics about your funding commitment what it was for the actual service request what the speed what everything you're asking for and the amount you're going to get now as soon as you receive your funding commitment decision letter immediately or as soon as possible sit down and submit your 486 there is no need to wait there is no delay there is no you have to wait a certain number of days there's no filing window when you can only do this it is something you do right away this is also something where a lot of libraries again lose it in the process you receive this funding commitment letter that says yes you've been funded you're receiving your e-rate discount yay and you say yes I did it I got my money well not exactly what that letter actually means is they have approved your application and your money is being held for you but you have to let them know you actually want it and that's what the 486 is saying yes we're going to get that service and yes we would like to receive the funding if you don't do the 486 they won't be able to start working on giving you the discount or give you the reimbursements or anything now why would you not want your funding sometimes things can change you start this process in the fall and you don't learn until the next fall costs may have gone up companies may have no longer exist who knows what could have happened you may have decided to go to a totally different service with something new is available to for you so definitely look at it there's a reason you might but if you are going to do it you submit your 46 to notify them that the services have started this is one of the easiest forms to do because all of the information is already in your account everything in the 46 is from your 471 that you submitted and that ESEAC approved where they have so you just need to go in the 46 find the info click the box that said yes I want all of these things there's actually almost hardly anything that you can actually enter yourself it's just yes confirming that I want all of these things you've already approved so it's kind of interesting that 46 is the simplest and easiest form to submit and the one that most often libraries miss because they think hey I've got my funding so I'll show you here 46 at the top of the form or top of your app landing page is a link to submit that similar to the other ones your nickname, you choose the funding year you choose yourself as a contact person on this first page and then continue and then on the very next page there's some search options here if you want to look up your different applications but by default based on that funding year you put in the beginning it will show you the different funding requests that you had submitted and you're approved for on your 471 you hear the status is funded what the nickname was so you know what it was you're applying for you notice here there's here's a list of the ones they're available and then there's a section down here that says selected funding request and there's nothing here so what we have to do is pick them in the top section and move them to the bottom and so that we select them so by doing that we can check in a box for one and hit the add one button you can add all of them there's a button here if you just wanted everything check in all the boxes so multiple ways to do it but choose the one you want and you'll see now it duplicates that particular one in the selected option in this case I'm doing this 46 just for the first funding request not the second one but you can see now that's duplicated down here and now I can continue on and get say I want that funding hit continue and we've got our certifications in this case the first two here are just the basic legal ease that we have to enter we have to agree just you have to check both of those but then underneath that is our CIPA certifications and this is where it's important there are three different choices for how you can say you are in compliance with CIPA the first one is I am completely in compliance the second one is I am working on becoming compliant and the third one is I CIPA does not apply to me because what I'm is not required because what I'm applying for does not require CIPA compliance this third option is mainly for it's kind of a holdover from when you could receive an e-rate discount on telephone services they eliminated that eliminated that as an e-rate discount a few years ago but some forms are still people are still working on some old applications so that is still an option the working on one in the middle there is for because e-rate will give you up to three years to become CIPA compliant they know that it can be potentially a difficult process confusing figuring out what to get getting everything installed it will give you some time to do that it doesn't have to be right away you have up to three years so for two years in a row you could say I'm working on it I'm working on it but by the third year you've got to change and be selecting the I am in compliance if you don't do that you'll have to give back the funding the discounts that you receive from the first two years because you didn't eventually become compliant so make sure you're going to be good to go if you're in process now we have had some people have some issues with the certifications where they know they've put the right one and then it turns out it gets submitted and the for some reason it checked the I am not in compliance option sometimes it could be human error it seems to happen too often for that there's technical weirdness going on who knows if you do the wrong certification once again it's not in stone and you're not out of luck USAC will notice this and they will reach out to you from the reviewers this form gets reviewed as well saying hey you said you're not in compliance but you're requesting your discounts on internet service would you like to change that let's help you do that and they will look on that with you when it comes to this kind of question or the PIA reviews these are times like I said I can help you I am when they send you those emails sometimes I am notified I'm copied on those emails but not always if I am copied I will more often than not look at your inquiry whether it's from your original review or something like this and proactively reach out to you and say hey I looked at this and I read through it and this is what they're asking for so you may receive an email from me saying hey here's what you need to do but they don't always copy me I don't know why if you don't see me copying on something that you've gotten that's okay just reach out to me yourself and say hey I got this and I'm not sure what to answer can you help me and forward me what they've sent you and I will help you out with it so can't always guarantee I get copy of these things I haven't been able to figure out the rhyme or reason and why sometimes I am and sometimes I'm not but everything is going to work with them on and I can help you deal with any of these kind of things so once you've got these certifications done here on your 406 you go to preview the form and this gets you same kind of thing as their form you can get a PDF and finish doing all your certifications of it you also receive a notification letter when this form is submitted every time you submit a form you get a confirmation back and use that so you always have a back and forth of them on everything they also send a copy of this to your service provider so that they know also that you have submitted this and they can then start working if you're going to get any discounts on your bills they can start working on that or continuing doing that it's also sent into your e-rate by Terry Center in your news section in there there is a deadline to submit the 4065 the deadline is either 120 days after service starts so service start date if it is July 1st or after the date of the funding commitment decision letter which ever is later so if they don't get to that funding commitment decision until later in the year 120 days after that now if it is the standard July 1st you got your funding commitment right beforehand October 29th becomes the deadline for submitting your 406 UCAC will send you some reminders about this a reminder but I also do this proactively as well in the beginning of October I will start looking at all the e-rate applications that have been done and I will look to see if you've done a 406 and if you haven't I will send you an email saying hey the deadline is coming up and you need to get this form in otherwise you may not receive your full funding so I will this part of my job here I will try and help make sure you get the form now submitting your 406 late is not the end of the world it's not like if you miss a deadline you're out of luck the way it works is for the number of days you are late your discount will be reduced so for example if you submit it a week later a week after the deadline you'll receive seven days less of your full years worth of e-rate discount so not too much if you miss it by a week or two we'll compare to the whole years worth of funding so you do not get completely wiped out of not getting your e-rate if you're a little late it will just receive slightly less but like I said I will send you a reminder in the beginning of October saying hey you did do this you better get this in so you can make sure you get your discount now the final form in the e-rate process is they call it invoicing telling us how you want to receive your funding and there's two different versions of this form depending on how you're going to get it as I mentioned earlier the first is receiving discounts on your bills automatically from your service provider this is the service provider invoice form called the SPI form it's form 474 so the service provider will submit this if you discuss with them and decided they're just going to discount your bills and they submit this form then to use that to be reimbursed for their discounting you if this is what you're going with you're done with your e-rate process with the 486 and you don't have to do anything else it's up to your provider however maybe that doesn't work out for you they can't do that you can do reimbursement after you pay your bills in full instead and in this case you would submit the bear form the bill entity applicant reimbursement form or the 472 you can do this month by month if you want to every month pay a bill and submit a bear form one at a time that can be a lot of hassle or you can wait and just do the whole year and then after the funding year is over after June, submit one bear form for everything there's also a deadline for this it's in coincidence we also at the end of October it's 120 days after the last service date which is June 30 or 120 days after the date of whenever you did your 486 now if it is that June 30 then I will also reach out to you about this in the beginning of October earlier in October so you may receive two different emails from me I separated out so you have both of them to deal with I may send you an email about the 486 saying for the current year you haven't done your 486 yet you might want me to do that for the previous year I will send you a message saying according to the USAC database nothing has been submitted for how you're receiving your funding you might want to do a bear form now the only weirdness about this one is sometimes for some reason service providers don't always get their spy forms in right away the funding year may end they may have been discounting your bills the whole year and they still haven't submitted and ask USAC for their money back I can't tell if that's the situation I can't tell if they've discounted your bills so I will still send you an email saying hey you haven't done your invoicing according to the according to USAC neither of these two forms have been submitted if you want your money you might need to do this bear however, and I do say this in the email if your bills have been getting discounted you're okay just check your bills if they've been discounted you're fine on your end it's a service provider's responsibility to get their money back you don't have to do anything about that you could be nice if you wanted to nudge them and say hey don't forget to get your money back but it's not your responsibility so you might get a multiple emails from me about the previous year and the current year depending on if you have gotten submitted forms and the deadlines are coming up at the end of October now there's a bit more information that you need to do if you are going to do bear forms to get a reimbursement it is a direct reimbursement from USAC it is a direct electronic transfer they do not issue checks to you so you do have to give them your banking information and you use the form 498 to do this this form you only have to do once and then it's in their system for the future so you do not have to do this every single year if you're ever thinking of the you might do reimbursements you're not even sure just get this information in there when you have a free time so that it's ready for you because it can take some time for this 498 to be processed and approved I'm talking like a couple weeks and if you don't want to delay being able to do your bear form and get your money you want to just have this information in there ready to go it's your basic banking information routing number account number etc they do need your federal employer ID number your tax ID that is used either by the library or the city for payroll they also will ask for Dunn's number Dunn in Bradstreet it's another number used to do business using it recently this year for different grants as well you can get one for free you can go on the Dunn's Dunn in Bradstreet website to look up and see if you or your city already has one you can use either or apply for one applying for one of these is usually pretty quickly so that doesn't take too long the processing of the 498 use that to take time so to submit your 498 it is not a form you use regularly it's not up here with these other three it's actually in that menu items under when you hit welcome and going to your libraries info so you hit your library click your library's name over here and on your menu items you choose related actions and this giant list of things you can do comes up and somewhere down there it will say create FCC form 498 now if you haven't done this yet you'll see that option there if you have already done this that they have been doing in this direct deposit and you might have done this or someone else had done this previously before your time you don't know if you don't see the option that means it's already been done so once you submit that 498 that option is removed from this list of related actions as something that you can do but when you go on that same kind of thing you give it a nickname and you just start entering your library information and your numbers and everything I'm not going to go through all this but it's your basic information you can see your financial information organization numbers all those basic information after you submit your 498 they will send you an email just an email directly to you asking for documentation just like doing a direct deposit of something you have to give them either a copy or avoid a check or a statement about that bank account they have you submit this to a separate database a separate system it's not connected to e-rate so for security it's kept somewhere completely different so use that link in the email to submit that documentation and then it can take some time for USAC to get that documentation look over everything and approve it eventually you will get then a notification saying your 498 is approved ready to go and now you can go ahead and submit your bear form so all of this information is to be done in their system before it will even let you do a bear form and get your reimbursement remember this is only if you're doing paying bills in full getting a reimbursement after the fact if you're doing getting discounts on your bills from your search provider none of this bear stuff applied to you starting this year they changed how you access the bear form which is actually great it used to be in what they call their legacy system this was the one form that you had to go somewhere different than the epic system to submit a different website but now they finally got it into the epic yay however because not everybody does this you do have to request access to it it's not automatically available to everyone I've given you a link there at the bottom there's also a link on our e-rate website where you go to request bear form access what it is is an Excel spreadsheet that you enter all your basic library information related to e-rate submit fill all that in save it go into your epic account open up a customer service case submit upload this document to them and then they will email you back when your bear form access has been set up I'm not sure how long it might take for that to come through this is something new but definitely you know same kind of thing do it ahead of time get your 498 done just whenever request your bear access as soon as you receive that 498 notification and then you're good for any future needs of submitting bears all of this is a one time thing to get just set up in there and then you're good for all future funding years once you are set up for bear access when you go to log in remember this screen from the way back in the beginning we had our two choices now you'll have a third choice of the FCC form 472 bear that you can use just to do that form so not exactly in the epic system but it's the same place you log in to get into epic when you click on that then it goes to what you might recognize as the what the legacy system used to look like and all you have to enter here is your entity number that build entity number they no longer require a pin number to access the bear form this is also a great thing to pin numbers if you remember this is from there's a previous incarnations of online access to doing e-rate and it was this convoluted numbers and letters and symbols and you always had to have that to log in every time it wasn't a password you created yourself it was issued by USAC and you couldn't change it and even though we had epic since 2016 you still had to have that pin number for this one form now you don't anymore you just need to know your entry number there once you submit your bear form you will get a notification and your service provider will too just letting them know that's been done and then no matter which way you're doing it either discount on your bills or reimbursement you'll start getting quarterly reports showing you telling you who USAC has sent money to so take a look at these reports and compare them to your banking your bank account or your bills to make sure you're getting the discounts so for example it will if you decide to go to bear it'll say hey we sent this amount to this bank account check to make sure it's there just to play it safe it will also say your provider is doing a spy form and we've sent them this amount of money check your bills and make sure you're getting the discount on your bills and you're getting the appropriate amount because this is telling you this is the money USAC has sent out and that is the end of the e-rate process with the invoicing you did it all so I only have a couple more slides just some basic info but I want to know if you have any other questions we've gone through the whole process all the e-rate forms do you have anything you wanted to know anything I didn't answer any questions you're wondering about as we went through this process and if you'd like me to explain a little more detail about anything we've talked about today what's eligible what you can get a discount on how you submit a form how anything works go ahead and type into the question section let me know if you have any questions before we wrap things up for today I'll give you a couple of a minute or so here to do that that's okay if you don't have any questions right now that's fine you all know where to find me you can ask me questions anytime you want to so just to wrap the last few things up here I have been mentioning that we do have an e-rate website a page on our Nebraska Library Commission website specifically for e-rate that's the URL there nlc.nobrasca.gov or a link to a lot of different things that can help you out I'll show you that in just a second here also every fall USAC does do applicant training before the COVID-19 pandemic these were multiple workshops in person in various locations around the country last two years they've done them online of course and they did these last month in November and all the recordings of their sessions are now on their website too so if you want to you're welcome to go and watch any of their trainings they did three days worth of workshops online they also have some self-paced training modules and these great USAC videos which are step-by-step of all the different forms showing everything that you need to do and they do have for some of them some pdf user guys if you prefer and do better with learning and following instructions that are instruction guides like that I also mentioned their customer service is called their client service bureau and this is their 800 number 800-203-8100 you can reach out to them with any questions you have too if you want to and there's a contact link in your Epic system to send the messages from there as well and of course as I said my job here you can contact me my 800 number here at the library commission my email address call email me as I said as your state e-rate coordinator for public libraries I am here to make sure you get these forms submitted and get your e-rate funded that is my main job but in this case now I want to show you the e-rate website that I've been talking about here here's our web page on our library commission website where we have lots of different links here I just want to highlight a few things that we have there is a timeline a general timeline here just so you can keep the track of generally at what time of year different forms should be submitted and what's coming up these don't have specific dates for each year but just in general when you would be doing various things once we do have an application filing window for the 471 I'll do one of these specific funding year deadlines for the upcoming year some basic notifications here here's a link telling about the recordings for USAC's training that they did I will be there today's is when this session is done we will have a recording of my e-rate workshop here that you are welcome to go back to and watch again if you want to that will be linked here once we are done with these in live sessions and the links to their training modules and I want to show you these USAC videos that they have these are there are some specific for each form not too long some of them 5 minutes 10 minutes long some basics about the program a few of these to get a little longer on how to file a 470 they take a little more in depth there but these are great videos I highly recommend watching them they are not too long and they are updated each year for any changes to the forms or any changes to the rules so definitely use these if you want to as more help also I want to point out here where I have a link to that toward gigabit libraries toolkit to help you figure out what you have in your library the reduced lunch counts from the Nebraska Department of Education I have a link right there to that looking at your FCC registration number is here different tutorials the bare form access the new bare form access information about that and where that spreadsheet is I have a link right there USAC website it is not always easy to find something so I try to pull out things that you more most often go to here my basic information about SIPA what information from the FCC and ALA and some resources for looking at different options for filtering and then if you are interested all this e-rate information is public out there for anyone to see it is a public program and we have here going back to 1998 if you want to know who in Nebraska has received e-rate funding each year and how much you can see what is received alright so that is our e-rate workshop for today any last minute questions or comments or anything you want to ask of me while you have me here type in the questions section if you go to webinar interface I can explain anything more detail answer anything you are confused about elaborate on anything thank you you are welcome thank you for coming in just definitely reach out to me as you are doing your e-rate call me e-mail me if you have any questions or issues or confusions that is what I am here for I want to make sure you get your piece of the e-rate pie alright thank you very much for being joining me today and good luck with your e-rate application bye