 Good afternoon and welcome to e-rate what's new for 2016. This is our e-rate workshop for the upcoming funding year. I am Krista Burns. I am, well my title here at the Nebraska Library Commission is Technology or is Library Development Consultant. But as one of my duties as a library development consultant here is I am the state e-rate coordinator for public libraries here in Nebraska. So I am your person to go to for any questions help you need with e-rate. That's my job here to keep you on track and make sure that you all get your money. And my contact information is the end of the slides here so you'll be able to get in touch with me there. For our workshop today I have a mixture of things for new people about what is e-rate, what's the basics of it, how it all works and then a lot of the new things that are coming coming out in the last couple of years as well with the modernization they've done been doing to the e-rate program. So for those of you who've done e-rate in the past this will be some refresher. But it doesn't help to be reminded of some things of course and you'll find out what things are coming up new for people who are brand new to this program. I've never done it before. This will be perfect for you as well I hope because you'll learn everything you need to know about the basic program itself and what things need to pay attention to coming up this year. So let's get started. So what is e-rate? E-rate is a federal program that gives discounts to schools, libraries and some other organizations. It discounts on your telephone, which is your telecommunications and your internet access, your monthly internet bills and any sort of construction wiring networking things like that for internet. The money for the program comes from the universal service fee. This is a fee that comes up if you look at your phone bills or your internet bills you'll find either the you know potentially say universal service fee sometimes will be abbreviated USF and all those like ten different taxes and fees we all pay. We all pay into it the telecommunication companies, our service providers, our phone and internet providers all pay into it as well. So all that money goes onto big pot that is then the e-rate program uses to spread out among the schools and libraries to help them afford their phone and internet services. The FCC runs the program, they are the main ones that oversee all of it so all the rules and everything come down from them and they created this company when the program first started out in 1997 the Universal Service Administrative Company. This is an organization that runs e-rate is the program for schools and libraries. It's given that nickname e-rate as an education rate. There are also three other programs. There's one for health care facilities that they can get a discount for people who are in high cost areas so where internet or phone costs may be very expensive like in Alaska or something and for low-income people there's a special program for that as well. So there's other other discount programs that USAC runs the one we're concerned about with is the one that's a schools and libraries division that they've put all of our school and the public's libraries and schools all together in one group to handle our e-rate. So as I said the FCC runs says the rules so they put out what they call reports and orders every now and then letting USAC know what they need to do to run the program what they how they want the program to work. These things don't come out all that often over the whole lifetime of the program like I said that started in 1996-97 there's been five or six of them but just in the last couple of years they've gotten really quickly with releasing them to a modernization reports and orders those are the actual titles of them e-rate modernization report and order. One was in July 2014 and one in December and this is where all the changes that we've been talking about that we talking about today come into play. Some of these changes actually went to effect last year the 2015 funding year some of them are coming with the upcoming funding year that's on the 2016 year so you'll see a few things from both coming up. Once the FCC says what they want to have done then USAC has to figure out the actual procedures and then you have the FCC approve them and then it becomes part of the what we do when we do e-rate. Who can apply for e-rate? All libraries and library systems are eligible in Nebraska the real only criteria is that you must be eligible to receive LSTA funding library service technology act funds. In Nebraska that makes all public libraries eligible so you don't need to have received the actual funds it's just that you are eligible for them. Also in Nebraska all of our schools and school districts and if there are any consortias where groups of schools or libraries may get together to purchase any services any internet access or phone or anything that would also be able they would also be able to be eligible for e-rate. Now the first thing I always tell people when they're thinking about doing e-rate is figure out how much of a discount you can get first to see if it's even going to be worth your while to participate in the program. It is a program that is an ongoing program that you have forms that you fill out throughout the year so you are doing things at a certain time of year doing different steps so it might take some time and some work but if you get a big discount it may be worth all that effort. So calculate your discount you can get anywhere from 20 to 90 percent off of your costs this is off of your telephone and your internet the costs that are eligible. The discount is calculated using a combination of two things first you look at your school lunch program number so this is the free reduced lunches that the children in the schools where your library is located how many of them are eligible so for that you look to see where physically is the library located with what school district and you look at the numbers for that school district. It's the numbers for the district as a whole not just the school that's closest to you so if you've got a elementary and middle and high school all three of those together. You can't include pre-k numbers so anyone who's in pre-k needs to make sure that if there are any of them any of those children who are eligible they are removed from the calculation and something to be aware of here is this is students that are eligible for the program not necessarily the ones that apply and participate not all children who are eligible not all of their families do participate sometimes the parents don't don't want to don't think they need to so it's not just who participates is the ones who are eligible for the program and that will be a higher number than the ones that participate which is good for you. The FCC chose this as the determination of how to divvy up the E-rate funds they needed something that was an indicator of poverty and there are lots of different ways they can do that and they just chose this one as in because if there are the more children that may be eligible for the school lunch program needing the free and reduced lunches that may be an indicator of higher level of poverty in that area they need more help with the schools and libraries may need more help paying for their phone and their internet services. In addition to that one you have that number you find out if you're urban or rural based on what the US census says here in Nebraska we're mostly rural which is good because a lot of the big discounts are higher once you're in a rural area. So to get this information luckily for us here the Department of Education here in Nebraska posts these numbers on their website I've got a link there later on I'll give you all the quick links to everything so don't try and script them all down right now you'll have these slides and actual links to everything later so they post in their website a spreadsheet every year usually it's updated in December so it should be coming out the new one very soon and it tells you the number of children that are enrolled in the school and then the number of kids that are eligible for these the free and reduced lunches you do the calculations for that and you find out your percentage something nice they've added to the spreadsheet in the last couple years originally it wasn't there is a they put a they first just had all the schools individually and you had to find them all and do a calculation yourself they've added a third tab a third sheet in the spreadsheet that is the district as a whole so you can go and grab that yourself they've done that extra math for you however do make sure you go back and check and make sure on the individual schools section if they're if it says that pre-k is included and if it does say that in your school they're counting the pre-k or that they may have you'll definitely you'll need to call the school and double check and make sure and ask them are any pre-k kids included this because if they are you won't be able to you'll have to find out how many of them there are so you can remove them from the calculation so once you have that information you can then go on to the USAC website they've set up a lookup tool to find out if you are considered urban or rural based on where you're you're counting this is based in the 2010 census data so according to the FCC urban is areas of populations greater equal to or greater than 25,000 and anything below that is rural so as i said most of Nebraska falls into rural but you can double check that lookup tool to find out what you are once you have those two that those two bits of information your school lunch percentage and your urban or rural status they have a discount matrix that tells you what kind of a discount you get or how much of a discount you get now you notice here there's two categories listed category one and category two and i'll get into that in a second that has to do with what kind of a discount what kind of services you can get but you'll see here if you have percentage of students eligible for school lunch program anywhere up to 49 percent the rural areas receive a slightly higher discount so it's good that we're pretty rural state here in Nebraska and you can just see here how much of a discount you would get up to the 90 percent you notice in category two and i'll get into explaining that the highest you can get is 85 percent not the 90 percent that you get so this is how you figure out what um how much of a calculation you could possibly how much of a discount you could possibly get so definitely look at this first to find out if it's worth it for you most of the libraries in Nebraska get somewhere between 60 and 80 percent of a discount on their phone telecommunications and internet services so for many of most of our libraries it's a really good deal so i definitely recommend taking a look at this and figuring out if it would work for you the e-rate funding here itself runs from July 1st through June 30th of any year so whenever you're thinking about applying for e-rate you're thinking to the future you're not thinking about what i'm paying this month or a project i did last year you're thinking for the upcoming year in July 2016 that's what i'm applying for so right now the beginning of the process for the 2016 funding year is starting people are submitting the first form in the process that i will explain in a bit and what they're doing is thinking to next July in 2016 that's when i'll start receiving the discounts on the bills that are um that i will receiving that month through June of the 2017 there's as you can see here approximately four billion dollars of money available which is really good for us they've upped the amount available for our different areas they added some more money into the category two services that they had in reserve so there is quite a bit of money available here for the schools and libraries and this is money that cannot be used for anything else this is specifically for helping schools and libraries get discounts on these services so if it's not used for this and if there's you know the money isn't used it doesn't put into some other program or isn't put into defense or environment or something it's just for this particular program so i you know definitely want to go in there and get your monies that's how you how much you discount you can get what can you get a discount on what is irateable so to speak every year the FCC posts an eligible services list this is a list of all of the products and services and things that you can get a discount on through the irate program there's a URL pretty long URL there that you can go to to see the current list so whenever you are applying for irate make sure you look at the upcoming years list they do update every year so last year's list may have different things on it than this year they're always paying attention to new technologies coming out new ways of accessing your internet and your telecommunications new construction projects that might be going on so they're always updating the list and making changes to it so always make sure you're looking at the future one when you go to that link you will see all the previous year's lists if you want to they are still up there for reference people need to know what was eligible in a previous year but make sure you look at the current one to see what is coming up that would be eligible this is something that what has been affected very very much this isn't the most effect has been on this eligible services list as far as this modernization goes and i'll let you know now as we are going through this presentation anything in the green text that i put in here is things that are in effect are the new things things that these two new modernization orders have changed in the program so if you want to know what things are that way that can give you a little indication of what's new as opposed to the way it's always been now in 2014 this is one of the first things i want to do is i wanted fcc wanted to streamline the list the list has gotten huge and unwieldy and just really too many different variations i want to do in 2014 before they started this modernization the list was 49 pages long it was huge it was a lot to go through over the years it just got in every little permutation and variable of how someone could or couldn't apply for something was added to it and it just got to be ridiculous so they said get it easy make it easier for libraries to figure out what they can and can't get a discount on so as of 2015 and 2016 the list is only eight pages long much more simple short suite to the point basically this is what you can get if it's not on here it's not eligible um so they really simplified just all the wording that they just really didn't need all of that extra in the eligible services list this kind of the services are all divided in two different categories category one category two previously if anyone's in the program from before this is your priority one and priority two still pretty much the same services in those areas but some things could be a little different and they now just call them category one and two the way to category one is all the services bringing your connectivity your phone your telecommunications to your library building so your monthly phone bill your monthly internet service bill that is getting just getting the connection to your building category two is once the you've got that service you then need to get it out to all of your devices to all your computers so your workstations you'll need wiring and networks and servers and things like that and routers to get it out to the computers in the library and that's your category two services you kind of think of this as category one is the walls of the library fall between category one and two category one is outside the walls just getting the connection in category two is everything inside your walls as i said this has been one of the big changes is the changes to the list and sec has decided to change their focus on what is going to be irate eligible they have looked around and decided that as as many people have noticed internet service and access to schools and libraries is not good enough as far as they're concerned it needs to be faster it needs to be broadband or fiber it just needs to be better than what we're getting now and they want to as the classic phrase is close the wi-fi gap to all of these schools and libraries as well so they want there's a lot more that they want to go irate money into for broadband providing broadband and internet access in order to do that one of the things they are doing is phasing down support for voice services this is your telephone excuse me a lot of libraries in nebraska have been using irate for again discount on their phone services and that's great and you still can for a while it's a gradual phase down that i'm going to explain in just a second here but in order to get the support they want to go to the internet and wi-fi and broadband they need to change things around and eliminate some support to other services so gradually eventually irate is going to be strictly for internet related services and nothing related to your telephone this actually worked the first year they did this was last year uh and they funded all applications in 2014 and i think 2013 don't quote me i can't remember that far back but i know in 2014 they only were able to fund the category one level of services which then was priority one your basic phone and your basic internet access anything category two was not funded at all they ran out of money in 2014 they were unable anyone who's doing wiring and construction and needed routers or anything like that there was no money left over they ran out because there's so much went in all of it went into category one in category 15 they started just a gradually phasing out some of the support to voice services and they were able to fund all applications so um it's a it's a good thing that's working not all schools and libraries agree with this change from the FCC um this is true uh many school districts did uh contact the FCC and make their official comment to their modernization order saying this is phone service is an essential service telephone facts um our 800 lines whatever and we need support for to keep it going and if we don't continue with the support we could have to cut out other services and that would be detrimental to our students and our users FCC took that consideration but said sorry we still are focusing on internet so we are still going to continue with the phase down of the voice services so this is something you will have to think about as you're doing e-rate that that is something you will gradually have less support for the voice and you may need to switch over to getting um getting more involved in doing internet if you have not been using e-rate for internet before however i do know that here in Nebraska and this is a thing um that is coming across many rural states many of our libraries receive their internet access if you're free or at a very very steep discount from their local providers they're doing the good deeds serving the community by making sure the library has a good connection and e-rate is pretty much a moot point for them i don't know what the FCC knows or thinks about that but um it may not be something that you can then use to help make up for your loss of the discount for voice services but do be aware of it that it is coming so that you can prepare your budgets and figure out what you can do to keep your library services going so what is eligible in category one uh basically anything that can get high speed internet to your library building is eligible this is not a complete list this is just some of the ways you can get internet your cable modem dsl fiber uh your t1 lines wireless services all of these are eligible i'll explain a bit about the fiber lit and dark fiber that is something i've been asked a lot lit fiber is the fiber lines that are already on and working in art you can get connected to when they did this construction and first laid in these fiber lines digging the trenches putting them in the ground throughout your areas they put in on purpose more fiber than was needed at the time that was necessary they knew there would be more demand coming in the future so it was all laid in some was turned on that's the lit some of what was left turned off that's the dark fiber if you can find a company in your area whoever is in control of the dark fiber and have it turned on that cost of having it turned on and this then the service itself is you can get an e-rate discount on both of those things so that's the difference between the lit and the dark lit is already existing and people are using it dark is something you'll need to have turned find out who owns it who's in charge of it and have it turned on so this is the first thing that's eligible for e-rate is all of your getting your internet access to your library so voice services are still eligible as of now anyway that you get your phone your telephone access your local long distance a hundred service voice over ip pots is plain old telephone service it's an old phrase it was known by your satellite service this would include your fax lines as well because they are done over your telephone lines these are all still eligible at the moment and here is you can see the explanation here of the phase down they are gradually phasing out support for the anything related to voice services based on your discount percentage so that calculation we did earlier for using the school lunch numbers whether you're urban or rural starting with last year 2015 you're they reduced it by 20 percent and they'll be reducing it 20 percent every year until we're down to zero the end date will vary from library to library depending on where you started of course so for example if your discount calculation is 80 percent then in 2015 your phone discount was only 60 percent and in 2016 it'll be 40 percent your internet service stays the same that stays as the full 80 percent if that's your calculation it's just the telephone service that goes down so 40 percent still is a good deal i think even for the upcoming year so i definitely recommend continuing with doing your phone service if you've been doing it because to get a discount as long as you can it'll be 40 percent in 2016 20 percent in 2017 and then it'll be gone because there won't be you'll be down to zero the highest discount once will be done as a definitely 2019 is when they will have everything phased out completely so just keep that in mind as you're thinking about your phone any questions about that yet any questions about your discount getting it what's eligible in your category one you type into your question section of your go-to-webinar interface and i can see your questions over here if you do have anything type in at any time you want to don't wait for me to ask and i will grab them as i see them come through category one this is the services that are within the the building bringing the broadband into and throughout the library so your routers and servers and wiring and cables any construction related to that this is now the category two is done in a different way to figure out how much money you can get for how what your discount would be from e-rate they do it based on a five-year budget that i will explain in just a second here this includes things like your internal connections as i was saying and basic maintenance of those connections so if you have somebody comes in and does regular servicing of them or you have repair work done or something all that ongoing maintenance can be um you get discount on through category two as well so this is all the eligible internal connection type things you can get your access points your cables your firewalls routers racks the uninterruptable and inter-optable power supply and any improvements and upgrades that need to be done to all this uh software that is necessary to run these your broadband that is eligible other kinds of software like just your databases that you have access to or your microsoft word or things on your computers those kind of software programs are not eligible but software you need to keep your your broadband going that is eligible under the category two something new they've added is this is a new way that you can get internet access it's called the managed internal broadband services or managed wi-fi uh this is something that a third party party can provide your internet service completely if you don't have a staff person um or on duty or someone who you um who knows how to handle this or someone in uh you know an extra tech person that can do this or you yourself don't know all the details you don't want to have to deal with your ongoing internet access this is something that someone from the outside can now come in and provide for you they can run it all completely keep track of it manage it all you do is pay them um and they keep track of everything and is even as far as all their payers and all so look into this um and see if there is some sort of a someone in your area that does this you might be able to get internet or better internet um for yourself this way something else that is eligible is your base basic maintenance of your internal connections this is um any repairs uh any updates configurations any tech support that you need to have done um we need to upgrade to the newest you know version of windows or whatever to get connected to your internet um this is something that you can get a discount on as well okay someone asks am i right you can't get maintenance for wiring etc if you're not getting internet service actually that's not true anymore basic maintenance is separate from the internet you can just apply for basic maintenance if you want to it's a separate category now in your um in your forms when you're applying for that um but in order to get this what you do need is you do have to contract have a contract of some sort with someone to do this so you'd have to arrange ahead of time that this is either with your um internet provider or with some other person who's your local tech person in town that they are going to be the person who you contract with to do any of this work whenever it might need to be done if they come in regularly and fix things and update or update things for you um if they have to come in and fix something if there's you know wiring gets chewed through in the walls by a squirrel or something you can have them come in to do that however it is only you only get a discount in this case on the actual work they perform so for example if you have a contract for you pay them $20 a month to be on call for you you don't get a discount on the $20 a month you pay but when they do have to come in because something need to be updated or something need to be repaired that particular work work order that um they you can get a discount on that so you would have to pay just monthly but not um you get you can then apply after they've done the work to get a reimbursement on what they the work they actually had to do for you and the last thing um that is eligible for e-rate and this could fall into um either category one or two this is all those extra fees your taxes and surcharges and anything else all those extra fees and taxes that are on the end of your make sure you include those when you do request your discounts because those are all eligible as well um any training you have to have your staff do in order to be able to use the internet related services that would be eligible um and any installation and configuration charges your one-time installation fees for getting the internet connected or something set up um this is something new too that it can that they've added that you can have someone else actually um provide the installation if needed previously if you had a contract that you had originally you purchased the equipment you'd have to have it built into that contract that the installation was coming along with it but now you no longer have to do that uh the FCC realize as i said they're always updating their what's eligible that people are getting these equipment from all over the place you can get routers and servers on amazon on tiger direct different websites online and then have you just purchase the equipment from there and then have someone locally do the installation you can now have that installation cost also covered um get discount on that installation charge through erate uh yes someone did ask also do we have a contract we do have a contract with a provider for the basic maintenance so we could get refunds or discount for the software also yes whatever software that's included in needing to run your internet access you could get a discount on that as well so those are the things that are eligible for erate in category one category two anymore any questions about the items that are eligible all right on to the category two budgets there we go so how do you get the money for category two as i said it is done differently than category one category one is that calculation using your school lunch numbers and your urban or rural status and then you just get a discount on that maybe you just went off what's going on i've lost my camera for a second but we'll just continue anyways um category two budgets what the what usac has done is they have created a um what i can consider as a fake budget pretend budget that you can work with to um get yourself these services i'm gonna try something here with my camera hey i guess we're just gonna skip the camera for the rest of the day i'm sorry about that okay one more try and then we'll just sorry about this i just want to see if i can get this taken care of or if we have just lost it no camera sorry about that on to category two budgets sorry usac has created um what they have uh fake budgets um that as i described them where a certain amount of money that you can use to cover all of these category two services that you might have it's a five-year budget starting in whatever year you want to start anytime from 2015 through 2019 is that you can have as your start year so you could have started last year but you can also just start with the upcoming 2016 year um this is for all your category two services that do the internet provide the service within your library um not for any of the category one which is your monthly phone or your internet that is done the traditional way uh you are free to go over what they designate as your particular budget that's fine you don't have to say we can only spend this much money um you'll just only receive an e-rate discount on the amount that they say this is what we think would be a good budget for you to have over uh the next five years how is the budget are calculated for libraries this is calculated based on the actual size of your library building how um how many total square feet there is in the library so and it is at $2.30 per square foot but there is a minimum if you have a really small building so 4,000 square feet or less you'll get a minimum of $9,200 as your budget no matter what no matter how small you are um if you're in a larger area a larger city or urbanized area and your population is 250,000 or more they've bumped it up to five dollars per square foot knowing that in those areas there could would be um higher cost to do um install the internet potentially so for example your library is 3,500 square feet multiply that times two dollars and 30 cents and you get 8,050 dollars however you have that 9,200 dollars um minimum so you actually have a pre-discount budget of 9,200 so they're saying before you start applying your discount um that's your budget now you do use your discount calculation from as we did before to figure out how much money you actually get in e-rate funds so in this example they have um they've said that a library has a 50% discount rate so based on their school lunch calculation there and so they'll actually receive 4,600 dollars in e-rate funds to spend on category two services over the next five years so you figure out your disc your your full budget that they consider that you could use and then you apply your discount rate and then that's how much in funding you can potentially get for your category two services now you can use this um money in any way that you want you have five years to spend it you could spend it all in the first year if you're doing some big construction project that might be a good idea you might need to do that or you could spend it up and decide you're going to divvy it up between the next five years evenly or use it as needed in each year it's going to just depend on your situation how you want to use it um and how you will um apply it each year when you apply for e-rate you will say okay in this now in the next year i want i'm going to be buying my some routers and servers and certain things and e-rate um usac will actually track your account your amount that you've used and deduct that and let you know how much you have left to use over the time so they will keep track of a running total to let you know how what's going on with your monies um it can be recalculated um it is actually officially recalculated every year um so um hopefully it won't go down for you hopefully your libraries won't shrink um but potentially they could go up if you're building you have an addition added to your building or you build a new library building or something that could be something that would then make your calculation go up the recalculation really applies more for um schools they use their calculation is based on the number of students enrolled in the school rather than the square feet like a library is so for them having it recalculated is going to make more sense every year but for libraries um it'll probably stay pretty much the same but they will officially recalculate it just making sure that your square foot is just still the same um so as you do your applications you'll say we want to do something in category two so we're starting our five-year time countdown and this is what we're going to use this year and then what's left and then next year we'll come back and let you know what we're going to use for the next year and on and on so each year you'll tell them new what is um you're going to be looking for oh here's a good question um do we need to have the rest of the budget funds available in our local budgets for example if we get 60 from usat do we need the 40 from local funds um well you need it from somewhere uh it can be from wherever but you're only going to get the certain amount of monies that is done by this calculation from from usat so they are saying you have a to as far as e-rates concerned let's say this for e-rate purposes you have a budget of 9200 and they're going to give you 4600 in funds that you can spend on any of your category two services over five years if you don't if you you know if that works for you that's great then um e-rate funds will you know cover all of that um but if you spend more than that then yes you would have to make up the difference e-rate won't be able to do that so it's going to depend um you know what your calculation is and what you're spending it on and what this is it's it's not it's different from category one in that category one is here's your bill and now you're going to get this 50 discount on it category two is here's how much monies have to spend in category two services and we'll just every year give you the money when you tell us you need something rather than here's your bill here's what you paid and now you have to it's going to be discounted by this much by the by the discount rate does that make sense so rather than so it's it's not that like your your service costs for example i don't know if this is even good a thousand dollars to install some wiring um you don't get 50 of that you don't get only 500 of that you get the thousand dollars because that's what you've got to spend and you can use it up as it goes throughout three five years so it's a different point of view you have to look at category two budgets category two funding then from category one funding if anybody have any other questions i know it is a little confusing is something brand new that we haven't done before but they're hoping this will help more schools and libraries get more of this construction done new wiring put in higher faster upgraded internet services all right let me know if you have any other questions um any questions about what we've gone through so far what's eligible what do you rate is calculating your discount up next technology planning uh you've had to do tech plans before many of you have they are no longer required i can hear the cheers out there yes cheers yes no longer required for e-rate purposes so you do not have to have a technology plan you do not have to send it to me to have me approve it for you but it is still a good idea to have one um it doesn't hurt to have something like that um eligible um ready for you um it will definitely help you with your category two applications uh technology plans can help you plan for the future let you figure out what you're going to do over the next five years with your technology plan and then you'll know each year what you can apply what you'd want to apply for um for e-rate for category two services also if you are um applying for accreditation here in um fresca it is one of the things you can earn points for in your accreditation uh if you have a technology plan you can earn some points for that so it's a good idea for that as well but is no longer required you will still see the question appear on the 46th the form for they ask do you have a technology plan um you just have to say no um there's a choice to say no none is required for me um it's still there because some libraries are still needing to use that form for previous years when it was still required requirement um but generally speaking from now forward you do not have to worry about having one now the last thing that I have libraries look at and think about what they're uh considering doing e-rate is SIPA this is our children's internet protection act and um this only relates to anything internet related so your internet access and all your internal connections so that's your monthly internet bill which is the category one service and then your internal connections which are um all category two services this does not have to apply or have anything to do with um just your basic telephone if you do want to receive a rate funding for anything internet related you do need to be in compliance with SIPA I know many libraries are already and that's great you're all good to go then if you do um do this if you're not this may be something to look into if you want to start receiving the e-rate discounts SIPA is very simple it only requires three things that you have an internet safety policy which I many libraries already have you have something in writing that says what people can and can't do on your computers again do anything illegal they can't hack your systems things like that you have to have a technology protection measure that's their official terminology for a filter and this can be anything uh something that's individually installed on each workstation something at your server level something that your service provider does for you as far as filtering the technology protection measure in SIPA it is uh does not have to be very strict I know um there is SIPA can be a very controversial subject there are all variations of what people think of it as far as the filtering part goes all the way from librarians who say no do not ever put filters on the computers we are all about freedom of information and that is censorship and that is wrong so I will never ever do it all the way to the people who say protect the children you know you need to have filters on everything and block block block all the bad things and everything in between what's great about SIPA for our purposes now I only speak to SIPA about I only speak about SIPA in relation to using it for e-rate what's great about SIPA is it is um very vague it's a very short act not 14-15 pages depending on how you print it out and it doesn't give a lot of details it does not say what filters you have to use it does not say what websites you have to block it just says you have to have a filter of some sort that's their technology protection measure and you have to block things that um visual images that may be harmful to minors things like obviously maybe obscene or harmful to minors as usual it doesn't give a good definition of what that would be so that's all up to debate for any every community you decide on your own what you think your level is and put in your filter one thing it also says is something else that it also says is that you have to have the ability to turn off the filter for anyone who's an adult and it does say adult is 17 or above um any adult who wants to do bona fide research of some sort they come and say i'm trying to do this write this paper on breast cancer research you know breast cancer and it's blocking anything with a word breast in it you have to have the ability to go there and turn it off for them really not a lot of censorship there when you can actually turn it off so it's great for us for e-rate purposes um the only other thing you have to have is that it says you're a public notice in a meeting or hearing basically let your community know that you're going to be doing that doing this so that you can um they can have a voice in it and say what they think or not uh there's information on the usac website there i've got the url for you about what um all the rules and things related to it but if you have not done it before if you've not put filters on your computer and you're looking to get more discounts on things like your internet or you're wiring and cabling and routers building a new lab building a new library for example possibly look into it and see you know what is the what you do need to do um covering this with a bare minimum will get you your e-rate funding is what i say uh what your um you know once you have this installed you you know you can then use it as you want to um and to what level of filtering you want to do oh and we do a question here about this does a library have to do the public notice and meeting each year they request e-rate funding no you only have to do that once um either if you did it potentially when you first if you've already got filtering you may have had some sort of discussion in your community about is as good as is bad had it on a um a library board agenda of some sort and that will work just fine um but you'll have to do it once and just keep a record of that that you did have that meeting if there's an agenda from a board meeting or agenda from a public meeting stick it in your e-rate file so you do have a record um remember when you did do that so no you'll have to do that once um if you've already got your um filters installed and you haven't had this public meeting you want to do that to then become compliant with this so that you can get your e-rate funding and that's fine as well but just that's just a one time thing you do have to maintain your filters of course every year but you do not you only have to have that public notice and or meeting um just one time any other questions about that all right onto our forms now we've gone through all the basics of e-rate what it is what you can get a discount on um much of a discount other things you have to take in consideration before applying now um we're going to get into the actual forms and the process itself for the um pretty much the next half of the workshop any other questions about what we've done for the first half so far yet though all right feel free to toss them up there at me in the question section whenever you do think of them though so there are four basic forms that you submit for e-rate and i said earlier e-rate is done um over the um throughout the year so these are each submitted at a certain time of year not all at once um not a whole bunch of forms you have to do and sit down and do all of these you do them at a certain time throughout the year um so it is um spread out not nearly hopefully not nearly as uh intimidating as it sounds um the first three forms on this list every every applicant has to submit the fourth form will depend on how you get your discount and this new form will also depend on how you get your discount i'm going to explain all of these the first form of 470 where you're just saying i'm looking for a service i want to get e-rate on a particular service the 471 you tell e-rate who you've picked to be your provider and what service they ended up giving you um the 486 you then tell them the service has actually started we've actually started receiving the service that's when you can start getting your funding after that the fourth form where there's the says the 472 or 474 that will depend on how you um get your money you can either have a discount on your bills directly from your provider or you can get a reimbursement check um a reimbursement after you have paid your bills in full and that will depend um those different form for difference uh process um and i've got we're going to go into a lot more detail on all these this is just a quicky um introduction here something new with getting your reimbursements is this form 498 this is where um you will now get direct uh deposit into your library's bank account of this funding it used to be a check that was cut to you um but now it'll be um a direct deposit and you'll fill out a new form if you want to do that that will give you secure bank information for that now this is the uh general timeline for e-rate this is what a lot of people ask is when do i need to do a form what is the deadline for a form so this i've got a general timeline here and um when we have some more specific dates i'll have it more um detailed on our website a funding year you're currently applying for this is for funding year 2016 that was upcoming is uh as i said earlier july 1st through june dry 1st 2016 through june 30th 2017 so as i said you're looking to the future right now you can submit the first form which is your form 470 this is where you ask for the services say we're looking to get e-rate on certain services uh as it says here you usually start fines from october november december whatever that we're into now um people always ask what is the deadline for the 470 well the deadline for the 470 is actually based on the deadline for the second form in the e-rate process your 471 the 471 form is what is used you use to tell usac who you've picked as a provider or you want to be your provider what it's going to cost what your discount is um all your oh you've come up with and decided to go with this is only available this form during a certain three month ish so period of time called the application filing window um this um filing window varies every year so the dates are different each year it's not it's not the same dates every year it varies every year and they announce every year what those dates are going to be so far they have not announced those dates for this year so i do not have for you what our deadline will be for the 471 or for the 470 yet um as soon as those are announced i'll have them on our website usac will release them on theirs i'll put it out on our mailing lists in our blog and everything but as of today i just checked they have not announced what that actual filing window is the way the filing window usually runs as i said here december through march i'm hoping it's sometime soon let us know um it's usually about the time when you can do that second form the first form your 470 has to be posted for 28 days before you can do your 471 when you put out your 470 you're putting on an open call to providers to potentially provide you with your construction your wiring your equipment um and you have to give them enough time and the FCC has said the legal amount of time they want you to give is 28 days then you can do your 471 so once we have our window dates for the 471 whatever the end date is of that we'd back up 28 days and that's the end that's the deadline for the 470 so once our windows announced we'll have a date sometime maybe in march once we know that we'd subtract 28 days usually it ends up sometime in february is the deadline for the 470 keep your eyes and ears open for when that date's announced i've been looking every day um so right now as i said it is the start of the process of the 470 but we have plenty of time they haven't even announced the window you know you're gonna have plenty of time to do the 470 if you have not done it yet so we're not coming up to any deadlines yet that you need to be worrying about um once you've done those first two forms however that's when you um go that your application is finally reviewed you first say what service you're looking for then you say who'd like to be your provider and who you want what the cost will be and then um USAC evaluate um evaluates all the applications reviews all the applications it goes to their program integrity assurance error department pia review and they will look over your application that can take months and months to do so once you do get your first two forms submitted that's when you sit back and wait and potentially wait wait they may contact you with questions definitely answer them um that will help them um approve your application and get all the information they need to do it after that is done and they've gone through everything then they'll start issuing their funding commitment decision letters this is the letters that tell you whether you have been funded or not uh they can start in the spring as soon as that window closes they can start sending those letters out if they've got some really easy quick applications to apply but they can go on for months uh for the most recent year for 2015 they finished sending almost all those out um by the end of september so it did go into the funding year you'll notice the funding year starts in july so that's when your discounts could start they were still sending out these letters in september that's okay no matter whenever you get your letter you will get your discount going back to july so um if you head to your monthly bills you were still paying in full because you hadn't received the letter yet the funding commitment letter your your service provider will know you've gotten that now and they will give you discounts for retroactive to the beginning of july so even if you haven't gotten your so your letter yet don't fear you will get your full amount of money but do be prepared to pay your bills in full just in case there is a delay in getting those letters out or if they're still working on their the of all the applications they have they get last year last year i believe they got somewhere between 45 to 50 thousand applications so it took a long time to get through them definitely so just be prepared that you might have to pay your full bill for a while once you get that letter you do still have to tell irate yes we want the money that's the 486 form um so you get your funding commitment letter and you immediately sit down and do your 486 there's no delay you don't have to wait um as soon as that letters you've got that you see that letter you can sit down and do that this is where a lot of people lose the process they get this letter and they think it says you have your you've been approved and they say yay i did it i got my money well no what that actually means is the money's been set aside for you and now you have to let us know that you actually want it your situation may have changed you may have found a cheaper provider your pricing could have changed something who knows what could have happened they still need to let you to let them know yes please do give me the money and that is the 486 um like i said a lot of people kind of get that funding commitment decision letter and say and think they're done but they're not there's that one more form you definitely have to do um and as i said there's no reason you don't have to wait at all sit down do it uh at the same time as you're doing that you'll also want to figure out how you're going to get your reimbursement um and this you do working with your service provider you can get a discount on your bills if you want to and the service provider will do that for you or you can get the reimbursement afterwards and get a um deposit put into your into a bank account for the library so you do those at the same time as you're doing the 46 so that's all taken care of and figured out together and i'll go into a lot more detail about all these forms as well this is not the only slide we have if you've looked at the presentation i sent you about all of this but this is just your basic timeline so that you can keep track of what to do and at what time of year now all of anything related to your e-rate application libraries must keep copies of any paperwork anything related to it for 10 years after the last date of service now this is new it used to be five years they have upped it to 10 you do not have to suddenly find things from 10 years ago no it's just starting with the current of the 2015 you'll have to keep things longer for the upcoming 2016 funding year you'll have to keep anything related to it through 2027 is what that means so um any contracts you've signed any paperwork any documentation about your filters any bills all of that you just need to stick in a file and hold on to it for 10 years you do not have to keep them actually in paper format however you can do them electronically if you want to scan things uh into and scan all your all your documents that you have and just put on a flash drive somewhere or put them in a file folder somewhere that's perfectly fine they do not have to be actually in paper files and you know drawers and drawers of file cabinets you just need to be able to have access to them in case use that comes back asking this 10-year timeline means that they can go back that far if they want to excuse me to um if they want to do an audit an audit in e-ray terms does not mean the same thing as it means in IRS terms it is um most most of the times they do audits it's for just a checks and balances type thing they're making sure the program works correctly did you get all your forms submitted on time did you understand the process was there any issues but also checking do you have all the documentation you said you're going to have um there they do have to make sure that the program is still you know up to up and not you know keeping up with what it's supposed to be doing with the new e-rate portal that we're going to be seeing in just a second that i'm sure you've all heard of this new interface for doing e-rate all of this information that's on the e-rate side will be kept in there for you so any of your forms and anything that you've sent to e-rate they will hold on to in their own servers for you um anything you don't ever send to them you'll have to keep track of your keep hold of yourself so between those two places whatever e-rate has for you and anything extra that you have you'll have to keep for 10 years for the SIPA documentation you'll keep that forever because from the first time we've done that it will always be um have something to do with all of your future uh e-rate applications so those you'll never get rid of you just keep a copy of it always um somewhere so that you can have access to it now the things you need to keep in some way or way shape or form either in your hands or in u-rate's hands all your forms you've applied you've submitted all their letters they've sent back to you um acknowledging receipt of them every time you send a form to e-rate they send you back a letter saying we got it um anything else they've contacted you with they've asked questions of you if they've sent you we need more information um or here's an update keep all of those if you did receive bids from companies or contracts and agreements all of those things that you've received um any of your uh receipts for actual physical equipment all of that so just anything that was related anything you've got an e-rate discount on or anything that was related to you getting a discount anything you used to refer to you have to keep for that 10 year period so any questions about this so far on to what i'm sure you've all been dying to see here and why to see is our new e-rate portal the e-rate productivity center is our new e-rate portal the acronym is epc but it is pronounced epic so this is epic our new e-rate productivity center how epic it will be is to be determined we'll see as we have to start using it um everything will now be done through this interface starting with funding year 2016 filing all your forms submitting all of your contracts to them if you need to show many bills any journey questions back and forth all is done through this system now no more on no more paper forms there's not going to be any pdfs available of the forms anymore there's not going to be anything that you will email or fax or mail in to usack anymore for e-rate it will all be done back and forth through this portal it's more than just a place to just submit forms it's got a and we'll see the screenshots of it in a second the uh it's called a mailbox you know a mail like an email system where you can send questions they can send you questions back and forth this is a link to get to it directly but you can also get it really quickly from some buttons right on the e-rate website that i'll show you so why are they doing this this was part of the modernization FCC directed usack to make it simpler make it simplify the process make it easier for everyone to apply and get everything online get rid of the paper um streamline it all so all of your forms all your status applications all of the times when the pia reviewers contact you with questions all of that is going to be just in one place um searching for all your forms um previously a lot of these things were in different places and they still are on the e-rate website but now for your particular e-rate account it's all in one place so all of your forms all of your requests all your documentation there uh another thing that's an advantage which i think is the yeah potentially the coolest part of it is you can now use this from any device you can use it from your desktop computer laptop all the way down to your smartphone if you want to you'll be able to access this um use that because contracted with outside country called apien because i think it's how it's pronounced um and they have this as a service that it's already a pre-built system and they just put their e-rate stuff into that so it works everywhere um now i wouldn't suggest i would not recommend uh completing an e-rate form on your smartphone definitely don't do that but as far as checking an application status or replying to a request from them potentially definitely you could log in on your smartphone for that no problem so any sort of device you want and even more importantly any browser cheers again yes um previously certain e-rate forms you had to be using internet explorer to use them successfully uh it was just a requirement of the forms they said they did not um we've asked previously about this they did not um have the programmers availability to reprogram all of their online forms to work at all different browsers so they only did them in the ie uh last year they finally got some a couple forms of 470 into 471 working in other browsers but still only the first two forms other ones you still had to if you want to do it online had to be an internet explorer if you didn't do an internet explorer you would think you submitted a form and it didn't actually go through i had this happen many times in many libraries um you hit submit and it didn't actually give an error message saying hey you're using the wrong browser it just let you think you did now with this new interface you can use anything you can use if you want to use ie you're free to use it or you can use firefox chrome safari whatever your browser of choice is you can use that so any browser any device you can access this portal that's a huge improvement um also you can update you will have a account here in here for your library where you can store all of your information about your library your address your contact info your school lunch numbers all that is saved in a in your library's profile and then is automatically put into the forms when you need to submit each one so you don't have to re-enter them every time this is a great improvement to have to keep you know doing things over and over again it's all saved in there um as far as our consortias and our service providers they will also have an easy list and access to you as their clients so um that is huge um it makes it much easier for them on their site as well so the else you will no longer need is your personal identification number your PIN uh this is that mishmash and numbers and letters and characters that nobody could ever remember that you needed to use as your electronic signature to sign off and certify on all of your forms you can get rid of those you don't need that anymore when you log into the portal you're going to have a username which is your own email address and a password of your choosing that you create to log in once you're logged into the portal you have access to everything all of your forms all of your library's information so you don't need that PIN number anymore uh the security codes you used to have to remember as you went through a certain point in your 470 and 471 it said uh write down the security code to get back into this form or else you won't be able to that no longer exists at all anymore either logging into your portal gets you access to everything you were doing so much easier not to have that PIN number or security codes to remember remember you will have one account administrator that will and you can have many people have access to your account as well so you do not have to have just the one person who can do your e-rate if you have multiple people that might want to do it if you have a backup person if you're lucky enough to have that they can all have uh be created be set up as users in the portal um by your administrator there are different levels of rights that you can have for people a full user can do everything you can submit the forms file them certify them update your organization information partial users can complete forms but not submit and certify them this is for example if you've got one person maybe your tech person helped to submit uh create the form but only the director has the authority to sign off on it you would have the one person submit it and then pass it off to the director to do these um submission there's also a few only category where people can just look at the um in everything in there but can't actually do anything to your forms or your application information but they can update the organizational info for your library um USAC has created what they attempted to do was create an account for one person in your organization as the account administrator they what they started off with was anyone whoever was the person listed on your funding year 2015 471 so last year's application the second form of the process whoever submitted that form they automatically created an account for that person is designated as your account administrator and then has access to all of everything that's in there um on your library and has the ability to add other users to the account uh back in july of this year they sent out emails to everyone who they determined was this category of person it didn't work for everyone some people didn't get the email they actually sent it out with no preliminary information no heads up letting you know it was coming so many people were confused didn't pay attention to it deleted it um it was an email that said your account's been set up in this epic thing come in you know log in with no information about what that was not understandably and i would to uh people didn't want to just jump into some system they'd never heard of before so some of those emails got lost in the process that's okay your account is still set up in there anyways and you just and i'll show you how to get into it um and actually get access to it even if you didn't have those emails or lost them or whatever um if we don't have access to it something's going a little wonky you can't get access you can contact their client service bureau which is which is usax customer service people and they'll get you set up with your account once you're in there um you can have your as you see here your own independent school or library or if you're a district or library system um of all those different organization types are in there once you get into the your epic account now to get to this you go to start off with the usax website um that i also have a link to it from our uh Nebraska library commission e-rate website there is a they've created a blue box right there at the bottom that says e-rate productivity center and the very first item under your resources and tools also gets you into it once you click on either one of those you get to this screen or right at the top it has your login button and that's where you'll go to get in and i'll show you that and there's a second but i want to show you first is just below that is these additional resources um you can see there's a glossary of terms some frequently asked questions but there's also a whole lot of user guides and tutorials this is a huge new system and they know it may be a bit confusing to some people and so they have created a and are still creating a lot of help for you so right now you can see there's user guides for getting into the system and using it and then um working on your first form in the process the 470 right now the 470 is the only form available in the system because that's the only one you can submit at the moment so they just have user guides and information for that but as the other forms get added they will add instructions for that as well the tutorials are really good each one is the longest one is maybe 10 minutes they're really short quicks bytes of information just how to do each of these things so i strongly recommend you take a look at these videos and the user guides they've they will really definitely really help you get through using this new interface and the user guide is great too i like what they've done with that rather than being one giant huge document they've broken it out into each each section of it is its own pdf so you can just look at what you want to what you need to know about epic is a work in progress they're going to be making changes to it adding things to it as obviously the new forms will be in there as they become and you need to submit them so they're going to be doing these special editions of their news briefs uh use act as a weekly news brief where they send an email blast out to anybody who signs up about new things going on in irate or who's been a received discounts and some tips and tricks on how to submit your application information about deadlines but they're adding one whenever they do make some major changes they're going to do this release notes uh news brief specifically about the epic system so if you want to keep up on when they've changed things sign up for this on their website and you'll keep up to date on that so now we're going to get into actually seeing how this new interface works as i said these emails were sent out in july most of them and um they had this subject line of usack epic account creation and it says your usack e-rate productivity center accounts have been created and it's all with your username is just your email address easier to remember um and it tells you to log in and it gives you the url to go to and it says here and i've highlighted this select the forgot password option to actually get set up in the system this is something that is not very intuitive not how you've ever probably uh set up yourself at any other online systems before most systems you have a create an account choice or a sign up choice uh for whatever reason the way this company starts you off with is they set you up with an account inside the system and you have to pretend that you forgot your password and reset it to then get yourself access to it kind of a roundabout way to do it but it's how it works so once you do click on that link or go to the login link here on the e-rate productivity center page either way you can get to it if you don't have the email you just go to that link there you get this brief little i agree to the using using of the system and then it brings you to the login screen since you don't have a password yet you just type in your username which is your email address and click the forgot password uh link it brings you to where you can enter you um your username again and request a password reset uh you maybe have done this before i know i've done it many times on the websites that i've forgotten what my password is uh you just request that password reset and they will then send you an email that tell it gives you a link to reset your password um it's only valid 15 minutes but usually you're doing it right then and there so that's not a problem if you get to this point and you don't get an email and it doesn't send you something that means they didn't actually have an account they set up for you yet for whatever reason there was some uh difficulty with some people's email addresses or getting them set up from the usax side so for some people if you don't get this you need to then just contact them and i've got the 800 number here at the end of the slides and say i am the irate person for this particular library and i need to have my epic account set up and they'll get you set up for it but if you do have an account in there and you'll get this email to let you reset your password it'll then go here where you type in your username again your email address and create your own password pick whatever you want following these rules so um typical password creation rules eight characters long a letter a number a special character one uppercase one lowercase so following all those rules create something anything you want to remember for yourself now something they have also said that we have i'll say argued with them about but this may be a a limitation of the system itself these passwords according to the company need to be reset every 60 days yes 60 days is a very short amount of time it is not really necessary once you've got a password that is this strong but that's a limitation of the system at the moment we've tried to tell them that's not going to really work for us as in many libraries only submitting forms every 60 days so every time you do this you'll have to create a new password it is going to be a hardship an annoyance yes what i recommend is as you can see here they say your password cannot have been used in the previous four passwords what i'm going to do for me create five different passwords that are just a little off from each other and just keep rotating through them every time i need to do this keep them you know keep them as a reminder with them somewhere so that you know what they are that's a way to work through this unless we can convince them to change that limitation of the system for now um that is how it will work so once you've got your password reset it will reset password it will then set you to this link saying your password has been reset and you may now log in using your new password click on that little link and it bumps you back to the sign-in screen where you can now use that password to actually sign into the system and the last thing you have to do to set up your account is agree to their terms and conditions um and it automatically defaults you to that where you can click on the link to complete the terms and conditions and it will bring up this is that long thing that we all read beginning to end right and at the very bottom of it you accept their terms and then you are good to go for using the system this is something you only have to do once the first time you set up your account and once that is done you are dumped here to your landing page this is your home page this is where you will start and do keep track of everything to do with your account when anywhere you are in this system the USAC logo this USAC with the yellow swoosh across the top of it that logo will be on almost with on every page within the system anytime you click on that it'll pop you back to this landing page this information about your library forms you submitted and everything on here across the top there is new the five different sections of the epic system news tasks records reports and actions the first section news is where you'll get all your updates to things any new forms that have been submitted any communication with other users in your organization notification letters saying that they've received a form will all go in here you will no longer receive letters in the mail everything all of your communication with USAC will be done through here so you'll no longer receive those colored letters pink yellow and blue letters that we used to have coordinated color coordinated each year it will all just be here within the USAC system the second section is your tasks this is all your forms and process if you started a form and haven't finished it something needs to be done undone things this will be here under your tasks records this is where all your forms are kept here you can see here there's for now we have a list of our of cc form 470s you can manage update your info here your applicant information your service providers your users all that can be here the next section is reports they don't have anything in here yet actually they're still they're looking for input on what what kind of reports we would want out of the system so for now it just gives you a link to pop back to your main home page your landing page so hopefully we'll be giving them some more advice on what we might want to get reports out of here and then actions these are things you can do within the system you can search for your 470s contact their customer service all those kind of things so back to your landing page the upper right hand corner of the landing page is your username information this is one of it's the demo account that i used for some of these screenshots so it says library system 11 that will be your name up there usually you as the user and a couple of different when you click on there's a little carrot link next to that you open up a pull down menu there and it has where you can do make updates to your profile and settings and this is where you can sign out of the system if you want to it does have an automatic and inactivity timer of 60 minutes so if you step away from the screen from your desk or go off the screen after an hour 60 minutes will automatically log you out but if you click on the profile you get this screen where they've made it it's kind of like a social networking type site um obviously this type of system is can be used for other things but you can put in a profile picture and uh screen change that background if you want to if you feel the need sure nobody else is going to see it but you at this point but in the upper right hand corner there it has where you can manage your epic user profile and this is where you can update your personal info so change the name um your name address phone number all that basic information about you as a user if you check clicked on the settings option here then you would get where you can change your language use language you use the system in i think default in english is fine um calendar type and time zone definitely double check the time zone make sure it falls on whatever time zone you're in central mountain whatever um because all of our forms are due on a certain date at certain time it's always 11 59 p.m on whatever day make sure it knows what time zone you're in so it knows when your actual deadline is mine did default to central so it knew where I was but just double check it to play it safe so that's you as a user this you can also in seasons you are the administrator of the account the first person given access you can manage users up there in the top menu and this is where you can add new users if you have other people that you want to have access to working on your e-rate forms you could add or remove them and manage their permissions so here's just a blank form you just enter new information for new person this would also be what you would do if you were maybe the current e-rate person and you're leaving the library if you're the director you're moving on you'd set up the new person is this or if you're passing on the information you're having someone else to e-rate now for you this is where you can create account for that person down to the very bottom and I've zoomed it in here is where you can tell tell what kind of permission the person can have and they remind you here of what the difference is between the full partial and view only back to the landing page again you can also from here manage your organization information this is information about the library now in this example they have as the demo it's got a library system with multiple branches you as an individual library would just have one option here and it just has all the information about your library that you can change address phone number um all the basics so any questions about the interface itself let's get into the actual forms we're going to go through each form 470 mostly because that's the one that you can actually submit now and then just some information about the other ones as I said the 470 is the only form that is available in the epic system right now because the only one you can submit so we don't have screenshots of anything else but it at the moment everything else is still a work in process 470 the purpose of the 470 is actually to officially open a competitive bidding process this is you are actually openly saying to any potential providers out there we are looking for someone to provide us with a service um and this is what we want for that service to be telephone internet what speed one internet to be all that to explain in there what this is now for many libraries here in Nebraska I know that looking for provider is kind of um not what you do because there aren't aren't any options for providers in the area and that is fine um you still have to go through the process so to speak you know play the game here with with e-rate to make sure that you do get um you involve you get the process going and uh get yourself into the system so you post the forms for 70 says what you're looking for as a service you have to do as I said earlier at least 20 days before you actually pick you're going to go with even as your current provider that's fine um sign your contracts if necessary if you've got an ongoing contract of course you wouldn't be signing a new one and then do your 471 telling you that who you picked ideally I'd have a filing window listed here letting everyone know when the what the the filing window is for the 471 but we don't know that yet so um that is to be announced uh there is one case you don't have to actually do a 470 you don't have to actually look for other providers this is a new thing that just came with the new modernization and as I said the FCC wanting libraries and schools to really get good internet at a good price cost effective price if you can find some provider doing this service at this this internet speed at this cost you can skip the 470 and you just wait for the 471 and let me right now we found someone who does this that's who we're going with and there is no competition there's no but nothing to worry about um the bandwidth your speed has to be at least 100 megabits to download megabits per second and 10 megabits per second upload at a cost of $300 per month or less and also something that is publicly commercially available to anyone now at the moment there's not a lot of companies that do offer this yet I know I've heard this year there's been a few in some of the bigger areas that maybe you're starting to provide these speeds um so you might have trouble finding it definitely I'm most likely but there's some that are on the edge the idea is I think from the FCC's point of view is if we make this a something that a library can really quickly jump onto that providers will notice it and they will start submitting us providing the service and it will be kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy we're going to give you easy easy easy e-rate for it provide the service get the libraries on board people libraries get and users get good speed at a good price and everyone benefits in the end as a win-win for the providers as well they just need to be able to provide this speed sometimes that is a construction issue they do not have the cabling or wiring but Friday who knows but look around for it if you have a provider you're working with and they're kind of close to this ask them say hey if you can bump up up to this at this cost we can skip all this competition and we can just go with the e-rate and we'd be happy to be with you so look into this and see if you know maybe it's in the area I predict it'll become more common in the few years as the library the providers really notice that this is something out there and that the libraries and schools are asking for it so it might be it's going to become more common as time goes on now to actually submit your 470 you go into your epic account and click on the apply now button right now that's the only thing it does is does your 470 as the other forms are added they will have links to submit those as well and it dumps you right into your 470 the start of it it automatically enters your library info based on the organization information that you've already provided and it just asks for an application nickname in this case I have said 470 fy 2016 so you do have to give it some sort of nickname as with most databases anywhere where there's a red asterisk is a required field so they do require that at the bottom you've got three different buttons here that you can do you can discard the form save and share and save and continue discard the form is really great this is where if you have started a form by accident or don't want to continue anymore for whatever reason you can delete the form out of yourself and you can do that set any step in the process and before you've submitted it up until you submitted it this is good if you in the past when you've done this a lot of times libraries have started a form got confused thought they did something wrong just dumped out of it and then gone in and done a second form and the other one just kind of floated around out there doing nothing and you'd have if you wanted to get rid of it you'd contact us at their customer service and have them delete it for you in this system if you don't delete a partially started form it will keep sending you email reminders to that you need to complete it I discovered that the hard way by suddenly getting all these emails for like every couple of days saying you've got this form to complete you got this form to complete so definitely if you start one and you don't want to continue it use that discard form button to get rid of it and just have your actual usable forms in the system you can also save and share which is saving it at this point and sharing with someone else who's a user in the you've set up in the epic system or save and continue which just goes on to the next page in your 470 on this screen there's nothing for you to do you can see there's nothing to click on our change nothing is editable but it does say we've completed this section based on information from your profile your entity's profile at your library and if anything needs to be changed you've got to back out of this go into the manage organization section that I showed you earlier and fix that information then go back in here and continue your form we're gonna say everything is good save and continue if you had worked with a consultant these are people you can pay to help you submit your forms usually large school districts and public library systems needs someone you know an expert to help them if not that it wouldn't be in your in your profile information that's blank but then are you the contact person if you are you say yes if you're not you say no if you say yes just automatically dumps in your user info save and continue and then this is where we can choose our category of service choose what we're going to ask for a great discount on and they've got category one and category two listed there and they tell you what they all are for and you can do either category one you click on it it turns green just category two click on it or you can do both all together on one four seventy you don't have to do separate forms for each one so you can do it all at one shot now if you're not sure what you want to do you can do a category one form now and then later on do another four seventy for category two that's fine but you can do them all together at once if you want to we save and continue that and that's going to ask do we have an RFP or a quest for a proposal this is not not required for e-rate purposes depending on what you're getting you can usually give a good description within your form itself of what you're looking for but if you have a really large project a building project you probably have something more complex that you need to explain when you're looking for providers or contractors if you said yes it would give you a chance to upload that contract into your epic system and attach it to this application you don't have to mail it fax it scan it is just find it wherever it is and upload it right into there if you don't and we're going to say we don't for this purpose you say no and you save and continue and now here's where you can start adding your particular service requests each service that you're going to ask for is a different new service request with your phone your internet if you're interested in equipment doing installation each of those things is a separate request you got to add each of them one at a time into your 470 to let people know what you're looking for so in this case i'm going to do a category one i'm going to click on the add new service request the green button there and it's going to give me a pull down menu on the next screen of all the things that are available um under the category one this is where my fiber my cell service the very bottom of this list is your voice service that is all of your telephone services there lit fiber dark fiber and um the internet options for your basic monthly internet bill this is where people get a little confused too there is transport only no isp service included then farther down there's internet access and transport bundled and then there's internet access isp service only now the difference between these is the important part here is that transport is when you have data connections that need to be connected between different buildings a wide area network so you've brought in the internet service somehow to one building and now you've got multiple locations that need to have a dispersed out too most of our libraries here in Nebraska are individual buildings so that doesn't apply um you can have that bundled with your internet access the monthly bill them just bring the connection into your library that's your internet access and transport bundled but if you're just an independent library an individual single building and you're just getting your isp brought to the building that's internet access isp service only and that's the one that you would pick most likely um unless like i said unless you have into other buildings that you need to send the internet out to when it's come to one you don't choose anything that mentions transport so here i have chosen internet access isp service only and then it will ask you what your speed is you want your minimum and maximum capacity um and it has just a pulled on menu of all those particular options i would you definitely want to make your maximum um over the over more than what you might even be getting now you want to make it open to potentially getting a higher speed if you want to if you get lower that's fine you just want it to be when you're doing your 470 you need to be broad enough that whatever you get will be included somewhere in those numbers so if you're currently only getting five megabits don't just put five megabits per second maybe put 10 maybe put 20 if you're thinking ambitiously if you maybe think someone in town might have this or my provider might decide to offer it if i put it on here so think bigger this is your kind of dreaming about what you'd like to get on here make sure you can afford it if it does come down to it um you don't have to choose that highest one either you can end up with whatever you know you agree to number of entities serve that's one you just a single library and then it also does ask if you're doing any installation or activation meaning is this a new install and you would say yes or no to that and the maintenance questions now those services will obviously be on your category two application because that's where installation and maintenance comes in but they do ask you are you by any chance going to look for that for um these for this particular service then you would shoot click the add button once you've got that all done and now you'll see it's now listed as one of your service requests under category one you can then in the narrative describe what it's for and i just wrote in here a very brief monthly intro to access for our public library if necessary you can put that in there if not you don't have to but now we'll add another service under category one and we're going to do our our telephone so we have to go through the second time choose voice service in this case ask some different questions i'd only ask for quantity what this means by quantity is number of phone lines coming in the building so if you have a phone line and a fax line that would be two if you have two two phone numbers coming in and a 800 number that would be three so ever many phone lines you have coming in is what they want for quantity and the same thing on the right you're one entity and do you need any installation or maintenance add that one and now we have both of those at the top here showing what they are so the else to ask for as well is this installment payment plan this is um something new that you sec is offering if you have any other charges that are not irate eligible you can pay them as a monthly pillion and to make it easier for you to potentially get this new service and this new installation if you arrange something like that with a provider they want to know about that and so you can let them know if that's potentially happening next we'll add our category two service so down under its area we click add new service request down there and now this will give us different choices because we have different things that we can do for category two as as category one here i you can see there's internal connections basic maintenance of those internal connections and manage broadband services so you choose whichever one you want just for this example i've just done internal connections and you can see there it shows you all the kinds of equipment that you can get a discount on and i did cabling and i don't even know if this is an accurate guess but i it's i did a hundred feet of cables i don't know i might need more depends on how big your library is but you'll see for any of these kind of quantity things it does tell you the unit it's asking for so it gives you a tip um what it's it what it needs you can choose a particular manufacturer if you want to for these equipments um i did no preference um same thing i'm a single entity and yeah we want to have our cables installed thank you we add that one and you can see now that's listed under my category two service um requests um and if you had other ones you just keep adding individual services and you've got everything on here that you're looking for for the upcoming year for this example we're just going to say we're done and at the bottom now we have a save and continue button we've got our same discard form save and share and save and continue buttons um we continue after entering all that it asks do we have a tech contact person um is there someone else who'd be best to ask questions that are more for more tech techy nature um if you're the person and you can answer all the questions of potential providers say no if there is you'd say yes and in this case this is someone where you can add someone who you've added as a user to the system or you can enter them manually this person does not have to necessarily have an account with an epic your it person might not need to get in here to all your e-rate stuff and that's fine you can as i've done in this example just enter their their contact info manually it doesn't create an account for them in here it has nothing to do with me in the epic system it's just a way to give a user a provider access to someone access to someone to answer their questions are there any state or local procurement requirements this is a thing they're asking now in the form basically are there any rules that restrict how you can procure your information your do your bidding um in Nebraska there is not anything state if there's something local you'd have to check on that um with your municipality in this case i'm just going to say no oops and now you'll see the last option here is change to say review my form not say to continue because we're now done entering all the info we needed when you hit review it then generates a pdf for you it takes a little bit of time to do this um it says here please hit refresh to check if the document generation is complete this is a static screenshot but right here it's got one of those swirly things that keeps swirling as it's working on it there's a green refresh button here just click it and a couple of times keep going until it actually if it's not done it'll go back to this but once it is done it'll bring you where you've got this link that you can click on to actually download and look at your um pdf of your 470 you'll also see here there's a box to check to certify and over here just grayed out is a continued certification um but you can't click on it yet because you haven't checked this box so first you click on this blue link which is a hot link and it brings up the pdf of your application so all your information is there about your library beneath that your different requests that you made and then in this case i've got my tech contact on the second page so double check that you can download that or print it out if you want to the pdf version of your 470 but once you've decided it's all good you check the box and now we can continue to certification because the button's active for us it says are you sure you want to do this this function will send you directly to the certification you say i'll say yes and then you get this is where you get all those little boxes that you check off this is all the legal stuff and i'm going to zoom that out for you here um certifying that you're the person to do this that you are going to follow all the rules that it is for educational library purposes etc etc you have to check every single box if you miss a box it's going to pop out an error for you and tell you that you need to check them all once you check all the boxes you click on the certify the green certify button at the very bottom of the screen and that's where it comes up with the scary legal pop-up the scary legal pop-up that says fault statements on this form result in civil liability in our criminal prosecution so just making sure are you really really wanting to do this uh say yes and very briefly it'll show you in the task that you need to certify it's kind of got a little delay where it shows them there still um but i for that's done it'll pop you back to your um landing page where you can see now we've got some form some information here under tasks and under your form south bottom you've got in this case i started one and i completed one and didn't complete one i've zoomed that out for you here the certified one here is the one i just finished and this incomplete is one that i started and still need to work on at this point this um the nickname here is clickable so you can actually get your html version of your form same thing as was in the pdf just a different format and you can take a look at it also into your news section will automatically go your receipt acknowledgement letter every letter every form you submit to usac they send you a letter previously they were mailed to you in the mail they were all on different colored pieces of paper depending on what funding year it was no more letters will be mailed to you nothing will come in the mail anymore you won't be able to lose you don't have to worry about losing envelopes the mail going somewhere else or having got lost under a pile of papers as this happened on my desk all it pops right there into your news section it tells you um when it was posted it tells you when you can do your 471 that's your allowable contract date that's that 28 days and this is where you can also make some corrections if you want to to the form um it lets you adhere if you realize you made any mistakes typing errors calculation errors whatever you can make those changes here and that is um that's the 470 process any questions about the form and submitting it and doing it in the epic system here um feel free please do type in any questions you have about the process as we're going through now i'm going to go through the rest of there aren't any more screenshots because as i said the 470 is the only form that's in the new system so far but i can just tell you about the rest of the forms and how they all do work through the rest of the process so as i said you get that receipt letter which goes right into your epic account you can use to make changes and it will tell you that 28 days you have to wait until you do your 471 um after that 20 days has passed is when you can officially decide if you want to go with now as i said it could be your current provider and that's fine um there's no competition it's just the one game in town and that's who you go with um but potentially you will have to do some sort of evaluation you may have other live other service providers contact you there are lots of new companies out there they're getting involved in the process and trying to get into the business and you may hear from other ones some of these companies will contact you and not offer the service you're asking for in the 470 here at the commission i regularly receive emails from companies wanting to offer us cell phone service um we don't ever ask for cell phone service on our 471 we just do our basic local long distance 800 numbers um i can ignore those they did not offer me what i was asking for um sometimes you receive contacts from people who are not do not provide service in our area we've had lots of that in the last few years i think it's getting just a lot more competition out there companies are getting really desperate for customers and i've had many libraries who said i had a company company contact me and it sounded like a great deal so i contacted them and said either i'm in nebraska and they said well we don't serve nebraska or i'm in little so-and-so town in way up in northeast nebraska for example do you serve us and they say no we've never heard of you um so you may encounter that you may have to just you know weed through all of those and if they don't serve your area you just delete them and don't um have to worry about them yes question just said by ignored you mean that it's okay to throw movies away and not keep those irrelevant bids for all 10 years um yes because they did not offer you what you're looking for or asking for it's not relevant to any of your evaluations yeah um and if they you know there's no the only reason any of these would come back up is if they want a question why didn't you pick them as a provider but they won't never come back for that because they don't provide your area and they didn't offer you what you're looking for yeah so you have anything that doesn't actually applicable to what you're doing or where you are you do not have to evaluate or pay attention to at all correct but if you do have anything that you do have to look at you do have to have some sort of comparison some sort of officially open a fair and open bidding process um using cost as the primary factor now that does not mean the most important factor you didn't wouldn't always go with the cheapest guy in town that usually doesn't work out well um but if you do have to do some sort of comparison um you do have to do um if you do have multiple companies who are actually offering you something valid you do have to have some sort of comparison showing why you picked who you picked this would be just in case you set comes back doesn't audit and wants to know um or if the company potentially a new company in town comes back and says hey we said we could offer you this why didn't you pick us you have to have something that proves why this is an example of what you can do to show um why you picked who you did now what you do here first is figure out what is important to you when you're picking a service provider and it can be various things doesn't have to be all of these these are just some examples um obviously price has to be on here and it has to be the most primary factor meaning worth the most number of points not 50 as you can see here but just worth more points than everything else you decide what your import was important to you and assign points to it and then when you find vendors who offer it you give them points in each area um prior experience with vendor that would be their current person uh flexible invoicing will they do discounts or will they do reimbursements are they good if the environment are they local something else you could add is customer service record have you heard bad things about them or had bad experience with them yourself so you don't want to work with them or the other way around you heard really good things around them you might want to about them you might want to switch put them all on your little chart here sign them all points what you think they're worth up to 100 and then when you get the bids and hear from these companies assign them points in this case you can see obviously some new vendor came into town really cheap but cheapest prices but you don't know them at all they are in a certain number of points for anything in the end though vendor number three they had earned the most points and they really went over the top here because we know them where we've had experience with them before so that's why you picked that vendor even though they weren't the cheapest in town even if this company comes back questions what did you do why makes you set question you you have this showing well this is why we did a comparison we don't know anything about these guys and that's why they didn't earn the most points end of discussion so this is only if you happen to have multiple companies contact you and they offer you what you're actually looking for you would want to do something like this and just have it on your file somewhere in case you get asked that's probably one of the more complex things you need to do one of the most complex things you need to do is this if it ever comes up if as in many towns we have in Nebraska there is only one company in town that provides the service you don't have to do this at all you've only got the one company that's it that's who you're going with this is all irrelevant to you so after you do that um where are we someone asks where are we posting these for the bidding process you mean where are you posting this evaluation you don't have to post this anywhere this is just you're keeping your own record this in your own records just in case you get asked as far as posting what services you're looking for if that's what you mean that's what your 470 does that puts out there what service you're looking for so that's two different things i'm not sure what you mean by what you're put where you're posting what it is you're posting the library puts posts the 470 and says what they're looking for then what will happen is companies will may contact you they may most likely email you or call you and say or mail you something saying hey we we are responding to that 470 that you posted and saying we can provide this service based on that information they give you they mail it they email it or send it to you themselves they is it in the paper no no no by posting i mean you're put posting your 470 to the e-rate system you're submitting your form to the e-rate system and it is publicly available to all service providers they will then contact you they will send you an email a company will email you and say hi i am so-and-so company and we saw you asked you did a 470 for e-rate purposes and we want to say we could give you this service then you have to look at it and see if it's anything that you can respond to or not okay great all right after this is done once you if you've had to do that then you go to the 471 um we're getting a little close to our time here um i may run a little over past what we started about five minutes late as just noticing it's getting close to 330 but i'm going to get through the last of these forms uh last of my slides here for you guys so i may run a little late we might go about 15 minutes over um if you have to leave please don't worry about it i am recording this so you'll have the recording later to watch i apologize for uh running a little longer than um what i had originally planned for um so after you've done the 470 and waited the 28 days even if you only have a single provider in town you still have to wait the 28 days just to submit your 471 you still have to give that that that leeway there that that amount of time so just do your 470 sit back wait look at that date from that email that got sent to you within this the system saying here's your allowable contract date and then do your 471 and this is where you say who you've picked how much it's going to cost your discount calculation information all of that information is in here um and this is what i just said after the 28 days if you have to sign a new contract that's when you do that as well before you do the 470 if it's an ongoing contract with a company you don't have to sign a new one every year no only if you need to sign a new one hopefully we'll hear filing window opening soon so you'll know that date when you're doing your 471 each of your applications will be given each of your services will be signed a funding request number it's like a one two three four five six seven eight when you said contact you they may refer to that number so you'll notice that on your form your search provider has a spin number that will be assigned to them that they use for different services sometimes they have more than one if it's your same company you've always used you'll know the number you can just submit it use it in the form if it's a new company double check with your provider to make sure that you have the right ID number for whatever they are using it for you'll get another letter within your news section of your epic system about 471 saying we've received it you can make your changes there if you need to if you need to make any error fix any errors and that's when you wait that's when your application goes into review you've done your 470 you've done your 471 and they check on it the PAA reviewers will look at anything on the form they may contact you to ask for additional information they will be sending you this contact information within the epic system whenever you you will also be sent an email as well letting you know something new has been put into the system so that you need to go and look at it you don't have to keep checking the system every day to see did they send me something did they send me something you'll be pushed out some emails saying go over here and check and see what they're asking for and then you'll know you need to go and log into your epic account and see what the question is very often these letters that they send you are long convoluted and written in what I like to call a usac ease if you have trouble interpreting them contact me that's my job here is to help you figure out these letters and answer them correctly I can translate what they're saying to you usually they take about four pages to say what could be said in like three sentences so if you receive one these letters let me know and you if you can't figure it out and I will help you answer and tell you exactly what you need to do they used to sometimes copy me when they'd send these information out to you when they send these as emails I'm not exactly sure what's going to happen in the new system will I be copied and know that you've been sent one or not it wasn't very reliable even before so but if you get something and you're not sure what's up with it let me know you can send me a copy of it and I can help you answer the questions but definitely do answer the questions they usually give you 14 days to respond if you don't respond to them they'll just use what they do know and use that information to prove or disprove your application they aren't usually trying to like catch you in some way here when they're sending these questions trying to trip you up and make you not get your money they want to give you the money but they want to make sure everything's all the eyes are dotted and tees are crossed so to speak so they're trying to help you like saying so a lot of them say we think you meant to answer this is that what you meant because we'll change it for you if you want and try and get the money to you or they want to make sure where did you get your school lunch numbers from where did you get this information from we just want to clarify can we see a copy of a bill to make sure we know what you're asking for or what you're going to be getting so they're trying to help you so don't panic when you get these just look at it see if you can figure it out if not send it off to me and I will make sure you get your questions answered this is that program integrity assurance people PIA reviews will be coming from once they're done with all that asking your questions verifying what your information is that's when they issue the funding commitment decision letter that's what will be sent also to your news section of your epic account and we'll tell you if you've been funded or not funded so look at this and see what it says did you get all your money did you get some of it did you get none if they might do more than one of these they may need to separate out evaluating your category one and your category two separately so pay attention look at what's on the letter this is what information used to do your third form in the process your 486 saying we want our money this is also where if you are denied you can appeal if you want to there is an appeals process you've got 60 days to file and say you want to do one and there's information on the us website about this appeals are not a fast process I'll tell you that right now I've helped quite a few libraries a few libraries here in Nebraska do it it can take a couple of years sometimes to have it go through all of their cert processes the first you go to usac and try to appeal if that doesn't work you a bump it up the FCC and I have done that as an example just earlier this year we received an approval of an appeal for a funding request from the funding year 2012 so library had to wait from 2012 till now to get their money because we had to prove that something went wrong in the system the process whatnot but they got it so if you feel you want to fight something that's a denial don't be afraid to but we do understand it's going to take some time for it to go through the whole process but once you do have your funding commitment letter you immediately sit down go into your log into your epic and do your 486 this is where you say yes we want your money thank you for setting it aside for us everything you need to do to complete this is in your funding commitment decision letter there's you don't need to pull out any other information or bills or invoices or anything they've just basically what you're all you're doing is repeating from the commitment letter into the 46 that yes we want what you've allotted to us there's a deadline 120 days after the service starts or 120 days after the date of the letter for those letters that have come after the service our funding year start in july end of october is when that falls for this the ultimate last latest deadline if i do pay attention to what you guys are doing i can pull up spreadsheets of your activity and know what you forms you haven't haven't submitted and that's also part of my job if you haven't if it's getting close to this deadline i will reach out to you and let you know the reminder i usually start looking at these in september to let you know the deadline's coming and if i send you an email saying the 46 is done and you had according to the records you haven't done it yet this is not just a mass email i sent out to everybody i just i specifically send it just the people who according to usax database haven't done this yet so if you get something like that from me um look at it pay attention if you're not sure what i'm talking about let me know and i can guide you to submitting what was what is missing you'll get another notification letter into your news section from this one as well saying yes thank you we got your 46 now the last couple of forms in the process this is the invoicing this is telling you right how you want to get your money and there's two forms related to this three depending on what you're doing you have a choice of either paying all your bills in full and getting reimbursement afterwards so you'd pay throughout the year and the end of the year get a reimbursement amount or you could have your bills discounted as you pay them throughout the year via um from your service provider if you want a reimbursement after you paid your bills in full you as the applicant file a bear form the build entity applicant reimbursement form that's the 472 if you want to discount your bills you just work this out contact your provider sometimes they proactively contact you which is nice and to tell them you want to do that and then they submit the service provider invoice form which they call the spy the 474 so once you've gotten through the 46 you always do the first three at this point you might do the bear or your provider would do the spy depending on how you're going to be getting your money the bear form also has a disc a deadline of 120 days after the last service date also falls the end of october i will also send reminders out to that to people who haven't submitted it yet just making sure you're going to be able to get your money same as i do with that 46 reminder something new now we definitely recommend if you can do the service provider invoice one have them just discount your bills off the bat then you don't have to worry about getting money later or submitting any other forms it's just up to them and most of our libraries seem to do that pretty successfully sometimes though your provider can't do it or doesn't want to do that or um for whatever reason things don't work out and you do need to do the reimbursement after the fact that's when you would be responsible for doing the bear form so if you can't do the service provider have them discounted you'll do the reimbursement something new with reimbursements is that it will now be direct deposit into a library's bank account previously the way the process actually worked was you submitted a bear and then you sent the money to your provider and your service provider cut you a check it went through them as a middleman that's not really necessary once you've decided you just want it directly they don't really need to be involved but that's just how it was the process was they've changed it to now it's going to go directly from usac just to you not involving the provider anymore this is a huge improvement let me tell you because we have had a few providers who are slow on cutting those checks or small ones don't really understand what they're supposed to do we've had to fight with some of them to get the money to the libraries it has been a problem now it will go directly it's only direct deposit electronic bank transfers no checks issued anymore this is starting with this funding year 2016 this year we're right away the bear form itself will also only be online it was up to last year you could still and I did help a few libraries you could still do it in paper and mail it into usac but you won't be able to do that anymore if you do decide to do direct reimbursement and now with this bank transfer you're going to have a bank you need to have a bank account somewhere that this money will go into libraries account a library foundation account whatever works for you you're also going to have to work out you may potentially have to think about and work out where does the money go when it comes into a library's account when it's direct deposit it does it filter down to the library somehow is that reflected on the library's budget somehow make sure that where it goes for example if it goes into the city's account that the city realizes that money needs to somehow reflect in the library's budget for these to be filtered out to the library as part of their monies same thing if it goes into the library's account so you'll have to think about that if you do end up doing this in order to do the direct deposit they've they've changed around this form that's already existed the 498 to be able to provide them with your banking info um it says here available in january but they claimed it was is available as of today I tried to look for it in the epic this morning when I saw this notice and I couldn't find it so I'm not exactly sure but coming soon we'll save for now um you'll be able to fill out this info so if you do want to do reimbursements go ahead as soon as this forms available and just get your information in there you're just going to be submitting your banking info your your account number routing numbers all the usual banking info and then as they're ready for you whenever you do go out end up submitting a bear form to get your reimbursement so get this in there ahead of time have it in there set aside done um and then you'll be ready when you're working on bears later on in the year um you will need to have your tax ID number to first do this you should library or say you should have one for payroll and something new is called the duns number they're asking for this information as well it's another code number used to identify people doing business with FCC set up by Dun and Bradstreet business company um it's free for us because we're using it for a federal form you can check and they've got a uh website to look up see if your library somehow already has one for some reason or and if not where you can apply for one so that will be something you'll have to get a hold of um if you do do a bear you also get a notification letter into your news section of your epic system for that but you also get for no matter which way you're getting your payments quarterly reports quarterly disbursement reports so it will show you what money that usac has actually sent out so if you're doing the discounts on your bills where your provider is getting the money from usac and then discounting the bills to you you will get a report letting you know how much money usac has sent to your provider um quarterly double check that and compare it to your bills to make sure that you're um getting the appropriate amount of money you're supposed to be getting and that is actually the last part of the process for e-rate um once you've got that invoicing and your money where it's going you are done with the e-rate process uh all right we're a little bit over time not too bad any questions anything else you want to any other questions you have about the process just got a few other slides here are some helpful information but do you have anything you want to know about the process anything that was confusing um i'm here and i will answer anything you want to know go ahead and type in your question section and i can answer your questions if you do need help this is the usax customer service department they call the client service bureau oh wait all right i have a question here is the duns number for a library or should this be for the city assuming the library is the city department this would be a duns number it should be related to whatever um wherever the bank account is that you want the money to be put into so it'll depend on that if the library has its own bank account um it would be for that if it's the city's bank accounts going in it would be the cities so that's gonna be the determination of where the duns number who the duns number is associated with and the city might have one for some weird reason that you don't know something that's been done in the past that nobody realized related to this cool so this is uh usax customer service they call the client service bureau um this 800 number that you can call and um you can submit a form online or you can also now submit questions within the epic system so um any questions you have you can of course come to me that's what i'm here for as your local person to help you with this but if i'm not available um you can always go to them or i may also bump you up to them sometimes for questions that i'm not that don't have the ability to answer most importantly with this right now is if you try and do that reset password to set up your account in the first place in the new epic portal and something goes wonky with it that's you'd need to contact and they can get you set up to make sure you've gotten account there um as i said they tried to get everyone set up with administrator accounts but we know that some peoples did not get um set up correctly in the first place so that's who could get you set up with that also as i mentioned earlier they have their weekly news briefs if you're really interested in keeping up with what's going on an e-ray i recommend signing up for those uh once a week get an email read it if it's useful to you save it cool if it'll have your deadlines for things coming up it will have um help articles about how to submit a 470 how to do this on your 471 um information about the basic application process and then this is the link to our e-rate website that i set up here at the library commission i have um direct links to the school lunch numbers for the the department of education um other live direct links that dunes number search anything you may need um training information um a whole lot of information specific to nebraska will be there also these are two websites uh e-rate central and funds for learning they are um both considered consultants where you can hire people from there to help you do your e-rate forms but they also both have free information for anybody who is doing e-rate so if you're looking for more help or guides or instructions or anything um i look at them for a lot of um resources as well um you do not have to pay them for some of those training things or just access to their information about the service and then there's me my late hundred number here at the library commission my email um address is there you can contact me with any questions um you have about e-rate um i am here um to guide you through this process to get you your money um make sure it's um hopefully as painless as possible so anybody have any other questions um before we um wrap up for this afternoon give you a couple of minutes a couple of seconds here to type anything in you have any questions about the process about your in general about what you can and can't get a discount on i'm not seeing anything pop up yet no all right i'm gonna say um we'll wrap it up for right now then unless somebody's typing a really really long complicated question um please do call or email me if you have anything you want to know afterwards after the session here um we have recorded it so i will be letting you know when the recording is available um and the slides and presentation material um i did um email just to people who pre-registered and it was posted also up to the recording page as well so you have access to all of these slides and screenshots and everything other than that that wraps it up for our um e-ray workshop today thank you very much for attending and good luck