My name is Jennifer Peterson and I'm joined today by Kendra Morgan and we're really excited that you're here and I'm going to go ahead and introduce and begin our recording and introduce Christa Burns. 
She is an E-rate coordinator for libraries at the Nebraska Library Commission and she does a number of other wonderful things, including the NC live webinar series at their library and we're really excited she's here to share all of her knowledge and experience with all things E-rate. 
Welcome, Christa! 
>> No pressure! 
[ Laughs ] 
Well, thank you, Jennifer and Kendra and welcome, everyone. 
Good afternoon. 
Yes, I am the state E-rate coordinator for public libraries in Nebraska, we're based at the Nebraska Library Commission, is where I am and I do other things here, as well. 
But this is probably about 50% of what I have to do for my job is assisting libraries in our state doing E-rate. 
Here in Nebraska, it's split up, I help the public libraries and our department of education helps the schools apply for this. 
So I'm just here as a library-type person. 
So what I'm going to do for you this afternoon is I've got a presentation here that I'm going to do kind of a mixture of things, it's going to be -- the title says, E-rate what's new for 2016? 
There's going to be a lot of that in here, modernization is happening to the E-rate program if you've been involved in it at all before, hopefully, you've heard about it. 
However, I'm going to do it in the context of what is E-rate and how to do E-rate for anyone who has not done it before, as well. 
So if you are totally new to E-rate you will find the basic process from beginning to end. 
If you've been doing E-rate before, you'll get a refresher of it and you'll find out also about all the new things that have been happening to E-rate and that are coming to E-rate. 
So first off, what is E-rate? 
E-rate is a federal program, it's not a grant program, it's not a loan program, it's a discount program, that gives funds to schools and libraries to get discounts on their telecommunications, basically a phone, telephone services, and Internet access. 
Your basic Internet monthly bill and any sort of equipment and wiring and whatnot that would go along with that. 
The money for the program comes from the universal service fee and this is something if you look at your phone bill our cable bill, you may see this as one of the 10 different taxes and fees that are charged to you every month. 
This is one of those fees so you all pay in a little bit to it, your service providers pay in a little to it, and it's all gathered together to help the schools and libraries be able to afford the Internet and the telephone that they need. 
Now, the program is overseen by the FCC, so they're the ones in charge, and then there's a company called USAC, the Universal Service Administrative Company, that actually runs the program and they run this along with there's three other programs that are also discount programs. 
There's a high-cost program that is for customers in rural areas that are really hard to serve and very expensive, there's a life line program for discount telephone for low-income people and a rural healthcare program that gives the same thing as we get for schools and libraries for rural healthcare providers, discounts to them. 
What we deal with in the school and library area is the schools and libraries division of USAC, which is -- they handle the E-rate for us. 
That's who you'll be dealing with whenever you're trying to do your E-rate. 
Now, the FCC sets all the rules for how this is all done, what can be done, what the rules are, what you have to do, the forms, and they put out these orders, report and records, it's the official government document, on an intermittent basis, whenever something needs to be changed and what's having a big impact on the E-rate is the two most recent ones, the two new modernization reports that were put out in 2013. 
Changes happened in the 2015 year and they're still happening in the upcoming year, 2016. 
So anything in here that I've tried to put most of it in green text is all stuff that's changed because of these orders. 
And this is a huge change, FCC decided there were things that need to be as they put in the title modernized, updated, streamlined. 
Basically make the whole program easier for you, people who are applying and the people -- and the service providers who are trying to participate in it, as well. 
So FCC sets the rules, USAC and specifically the schools and library division figures out how to use these rules and actually get the money to the schools and libraries. 
Now, who can apply for this? 
For what we're talking about today, libraries and library systems, the only requirement is that you are eligible for LSTA funds. 
That would be something that you may already know or you can check with your state library to find out if you are eligible for that. 
Schools and school districts can also apply to the E-rate program and if you're in a consortium, a group, you as a consortium can apply, as well. 
So it doesn't have to be you as an individual or as a school or library. 
You can do it as a consortium. 
Now, there's a few things that I tell libraries first before they decide to even participate in the program. 
Things that you need to look at to decide if this program is right for you. 
First, how much of a discount can you possibly get? 
So how can you calculate and figure out all the work I'm going to be doing to get this money, is it worth it? 
Am I going to get something that will be worth it to my budget? 
First thing you'll want to find out is what your discount is. 
Discounts can be anywhere from 20% to 90% off of your bills. 
This is your monthly phone bill, your monthly Internet bill. 
And the discount, the way you calculate it is based on the school lunch program that your school is participating in. 
It's whatever the percentage of students from K-12 that are eligible for the school lunch program in your school district in which your library is located, meaning look physically on a map, geographically, where is your library, figure out what that school district is and find the numbers for that entire district, not the school that's closest to you, not if you're next door to the high school, it's just the high school, no, you take the entire school district wherever you're located and find those numbers. 
And then use that in conjunction with whether you're considered urban or rural and this is based on the U.S. census information. 
So where do you get this info? 
Well, it depends. 
It's only a three step process to calculate this for yourself. 
Finding your school lunch numbers, possibly your department of education collects it from all the schools and you can contact them to find it. 
Or you can contact your own school district, their main office, the superintendent, someone in charge there, as I said schools apply for E-rate, as well. 
So if you can find out who at the school does it, they'll know these numbers, too. 
You can get your numbers there, it will vary from state to state. 
And then on the E-rate website, they actually have a tool where you can look up your urban or rural status to find out where you fall. 
You are urban if you are an area of population that is 25,000 or more and rural would be everything else. 
You can just look up this, it will give it to you by state, and then by county where you are, you can see what you are. 
Then they've got a matrix that you use using these two -- well, the numbers for the school lunch and whether you're urban or rural to decide how much your discount is. 
And this is the matrix for it. 
It does mention this category one and category two and I will explain what that means in just a bit, that's talking about what kinds of services you're getting a discount on, it's broken up into two different categories but you take the percent of students that are eligible and this is important. 
It's the students that are eligible, not that actually participate and that could be a different number. 
The number of students that actually apply sometimes can be less than how many are eligible. 
Some parents don't think they need to, don't want to, don't know about the program but the school will know who is actually eligible so you figure out how many of your students are eligible, whether you're urban or rural. 
And you can see pretty much all across the board, except for when it's the highest level of students for the category two, what your discount is. 
And you can see you're also for the lower -- for the smaller areas, the rural is a little higher. 
When it gets to 50% or above of students eligible, it's pretty much -- it's the same for whether you're urban or rural. 
This is just the particular number they used to figure out who is the most needy in the country, where are the neediest areas? 
They needed something to determine how should we be splitting up this money? 
Who should be getting what? 
And they picked this as a -- as one indicator and there are many, of poverty, is how many students if there are more students that are eligible for the school lunch program, the reduced and free lunches, that would be one indicator that that area is more needy and will give them the highest amount of discount on their bills. 
Now, also you need to know the funding year. 
E-rate is done on an annual basis, there are forms, it's an ongoing program that you do, an ongoing process. 
When you're thinking about applying for E-rate, you are thinking into the future. 
Right now, what the new application process that is just starting up this fall, you are thinking about receiving discounts on your bills starting next July, which is called the funding year 2016, and every year runs from July 1st of a year to June 30th of the next year. 
Right now, you're thinking about getting my discounts from July next year through June of the year after that. 
You don't get -- you can't apply for something you're paying for right now and get it, you can't do anything retroactive, you're always thinking to the future. 
There is a few billion dollars of money available, depending on the category. 
There's some extra money they pulled out for category two, which is your Internet connections and your wiring and your cabling and I'll get into a lot more detail about that in a bit. 
Category one first, fund those and if they need money they can pull from category two and they can sometimes decide who will get money depending if they run out of money as the program goes on, depends on how popular it is for a particular year. 
So that's just something to keep in mind is when the fung year is. 
So first you've got your discount to figure out when you get the money. 
And next thing to note is what can you get E-rate on? 
What can you get a discount on? 
Eligible services list is where you look to see what services you can receive your discounts on. 
Every year, the FCC publishes a new list, a new eligible services list. 
And you can find it on their website, this is a long URL that you will have access to later so you don't have to try to scribble down any of these you reallys you get here, they'll be all made available to you later but they post them there and also over the previous years, they're there as well if you want to look and see what was on a previous list, they do change it every year. 
Different things become available, new technologies come up and they decide to investigate and decide whether they are or are not going to cover them. 
So depending on what year you're applying for, you need to look at the new list to find out if what you want to get is on it. 
Part of the modernization of this was streamlining this list. 
In 2014 the list was 49 pages long. 
It was huge, it was unwieldy, I used it online as a PDF and searched for what I was doing because you couldn't really just flip through it and find what you were looking for. 
Now, though it's down to about 20 pages for this year and half of that is just explanation, talking about what we did to change and why we made the certain changes. 
Only half of it is now the actual list of things that were available. 
We really condensetid and made it much simpler. 
There's category one, I'm going to explain exactly what you can get a discount on. 
Category one is services that provide your connectivity, your high-speed connectivity, broadband, whatever to the building. 
So your actual Internet connection, when you pay your monthly fee to have the Internet get to the building. 
Category two is once you've got it in the building all the things you need to spread it around the building or to multiple buildings if you're on a campus where you're getting things to multiple locations. 
So wiring, cabling, routers, all of that internal equipment and connections. 
So that's how you can think of it, one is getting it to the building and once it crosses your walls inside, you're in category two. 
Oh, well, I have a question here that came up that I think I'm hopefully going to be addressing right now and this is, yeah, E-rate can be confusing, someone says everything on the eligible services list sounds like a different language to me. 
How can I translate my poor understanding of technology into their terms? 
Yes, it's not the easiest thing to understand but hopefully once I go through this list here and my slides, you'll understand some of it. 
If not we can get you some help, too. 
Now, another thing that is happening with the eligible services list as a result of the modernization is focusing a lot more on Internet access. 
The FCC has determined that schools and libraries don't have the level of Internet connection that they think they should have. 
They don't have a fast enough connection, a strong enough connection, enough computers in the libraries being connected and they want to really help fix that. 
And as you heard about around, close the Wi-Fi gap as well so they're trying to put a lot more into that. 
In order to do that they are phasing out support of voice services, gradual phaseout of telephone discounts. 
So for your phone, your cell phone, 800 lines that you have, those are gradually being phased out of the program so more money can go towards getting Internet into the libraries, the idea being if you're not getting your phone discount anymore you can get more of a discount on your Internet, hopefully, that will make up for it, I don't know but it is something to be planning for that if you have been depending a lot on the phone discount it is gradually going away and I'll have a more detailed explanation of that, how that's working come up. 
This actually started in 2015, the last funding year which we're in the middle of getting the discounts for right now and it actually worked. 
They had enough money to fund all of their applications for both category one and category two and the year before they actually did not do any category two applications. 
They just said we are not going to have enough money, it's just not there, sorry, we have to stop at category one and you just have to try again next year sorry. 
They ran out of money. 
Now with increasing the amount of money that's coming in and phasing out the voice they were actually able to fund every application that came in and with eligible and correct and accurate and everybody got their money. 
So it's working. 
Where are we at here? 
So specifically, for category one, what is eligible? 
Anything -- basically, as it says here, anything that can get high-speed broadband to your library. 
This is the first thing that's eligible in category one. 
So your data transmission, Internet access, anything that you can get to the library, and this is -- this does not list every single type of thing, I just put the ones that I could fit on here but cable modem, DSL, fiber, satellite, wireless, all of the T1, T3 lines. 
I just went to training last week for this, if it's something that has a letter and a number, an acronym to it, it's probably eligible. 
But the basis is really does it provide high-speed broadband to the library buildings? 
Then it's eligible. 
This is getting your Internet. 
So that's the first thing in category one that is eligible, getting your Internet connections. 
The second thing that is still eligible is your voice services. 
So any way that you can get telephone to the library, your local, long distance, 800, cell phones, satellite phone, POTS, plain old telephone service, an old acronym. 
If you have specific circuits that are dedicated to providing only voice service, not a combination of voice and Internet, those circuits. 
All of these things are eligible now but are being gradually phased out. 
They're being phased out to provide more support to the Internet. 
The discount rate, each year starting with 2015 which was last year, you take whatever discount you calculated and reduce it by 20% just for your telephone. 
The Internet still gets the full discount, nothing's happening to that, it's just for these particular services, you reduce it by 20% and 20% each year after that until you're down to zero. 
The people with the highest discount rate will be down to zero in 2019. 
So, for example, if your basic discount in your calculation is 80% in 2015 which just is going on now, you only got 60% off and next year you'll get 40%. 
40% is still a good amount to save so there's no reason to stop doing your phone. 
Just be aware of the fact that gradually you're going to have to be paying more for that. 
We do have a question. 
What's the difference between dark and lit fiber? 
It's actually kind of -- it sounds more convoluted than it should be. 
Lit fiber is fiberoptics that are already up and turned on and working. 
Dark fiber is actually fiber, when they laid new fiber lines, some of it is not turned on yet, it's for future use because they knew that somebody will eventually use it but nobody is using it yet. 
If you can arrange with the provider to turn on that dark fiber then that is something you can use and get a better connection, a better fiber connection to your library for the Internet. 
Lit is already on and being used currently and you're getting into it. 
Dark needs to be turned on, and then you'll be able to use it. 
But you can get a discount on the dark fiber and the cost for turning it on and getting it connected, you can get a discount for those services and that construction and all the equipment needed for that through E-rate. 
So that's your category one, your basic phone and your basic Internet connection. 
So as I said, that's getting the Internet to your library. 
Category two, this is the connection for once it's in the building, getting it around your building and maybe into other nearby buildings, as I said if you're on a campus with multiple buildings. 
The money for this is calculated in a different way that I will explain. 
You have a five-year budget, money that you can spend over the next five years. 
Or the next five years, whenever you decide to start doing this. 
And this is your internal connections, your maintenance of those internal connections, if you need to have support done to them, fixes, whatever, and internal broadband services. 
Question about the phone. 
Good question. 
Would we need to get a separate phoneline if it is included in our Internet services? 
As a result to get a separate phone line. 
What you would need to get is a bill from your provider that separates out the costs of those two services, and so you can have a line item that shows what it actually costs you for the phone and the Internet, they need to be able to provide that to you and then you would get a different discount on each of those services. 
If it's bundled right now, providers know this change is happening, this phaseout here and the difference. 
So they should be aware of the fact that they need to start separating out the costs so that you guys can appropriately apply for your E-rate and they can appropriately discount you the E-rate. 
Yes. 
Someone asked how do the assessors know whether the fiber is on or off, you need to ask your provider. 
You probably off the top of your head wouldn't necessarily know but contact your Internet provider and they can tell you what's nearby you or what's coming to the area and what you need to do to connect into it. 
So category two, the connections that come, that are used once you've got the Internet to your building. 
All of these are eligible for category two. 
This is basically, as you can see, the equipment, the physical part of it. 
Your cabling, firewalls, routers, power supply, any improvements you need to make to get the broadband throughout the building, the construction costs. 
You can think of it along this as the category one is more of the ephemeral, the stuff floating to you and this is once you get in, I need this hardware to get people to be able to use it. 
That's what is eligible for your category two. 
So any of these is the actual equipment and if you need to do construction, if you're upgrading a computer lab to get a better connection, if you're building a computer lab, if you're building a new library, this is where all those costs would come into play and you can get a discount on all of those. 
And this is something to think about when you are thinking about doing new construction on your library or building a new building, you need to make -- do this E-rate application enough ahead of time to get those costs covered. 
So if your thinking and discussion about having new construction done, bring this into the discussion as well so they know this is something we need to think about as well to get those discounts. 
Now, something new they added, part of the modernization is a new way of getting Internet. 
Rather than you having to run your Internet yourself, have a computer person, have a tech department, a third party can provide your broadband or Wi-Fi and all of the operation and management, the fees you pay to them, the installation costs, anything included in that, you can also get as a category two and you can get a discount on that as well so if you want to go outside and just tell someone else do this all for us, we don't have the person, the staff, the time to keep track of it, all of that can be completely covered in category two, as well. 
Something else that comes along with category two is the maintenance of these connections. 
You're going to have to do repairs. 
You're going to have to do upgrades, technology upgrades, servers, anything like this, and that is covered, as well. 
When I say, for example, because it happened, if a squirrel gets in the walls of your computer lab or your library and chews through the Internet connection and you've got to have someone come in and fix that, you can get a discount on that. 
Now in order to do this, you would have a contract that you've arranged ahead of time with someone, it can be your Internet service provider may have a service for this or someone independent so you arrange with them if something happens you'll be the person we call, and then when it does happen you call them in and they will bill you for that work that they performed, and then you would apply to get a reimbursement for your discount for that work. 
Now, this is specifically only for the actual work that's performed. 
If you're paying them a fee, for example, we pay you $20 a month to be on call, that $20 a month is not eligible for a discount but whether you actually have to call them to come in and they actually do work and say this is what it costs us to do this work, that cost is what you can get a discount on. 
So keep in that mind when you're also setting up your Internet that you do need to have somebody on call for this and you can get a discount on some of it. 
The last thing that's -- a bunch of miscellaneous costs, whether it's one or two, category one or two, all those taxes and surcharges and extras that are on your bill, that are not specifically the service itself or the equipment itself, that would fall under the miscellaneous category. 
Training if you need to train your staff to use this service meaning use the Internet, that kind of thing, and installation. 
This is new. 
You always could do installation but now, you can have a third party come in and install the equipment that you may have purchased somewhere else. 
Previously it had to be together as one deal because they realized the FCC does that you are organized equipment all over the place now, online, through Amazon, other online computer sites, whatever your local computer store, you may be buying the equipment, the routers, the switches from somewhere and then having someone else local install it. 
The cost of that installation, no matter where you've purchased your equipment, can be put under the miscellaneous and get a discount on that, as well. 
Okay. 
I've got a question that came in here about applying for category two funding. 
Funding was approved for Internet connections but basic maintenance went into review saying the cost was more than necessary. 
Yeah, basic maintenance, if you do it each year one at a time rather than for the whole five years, that would probably be what it was. 
That should have been something they explained more to you but what was the correct way to do it I would think that -- they were just stating that you were paying more than you needed to for basic maintenance? 
I would definitely apply for that. 
Yeah separating it out from year-to-year would have made that possibly easier, yeah. 
Another question, you're welcome. 
If you're adding cable drops, do you need to have a pre-existing contract to receive reimbursement? 
If it's something that is part of -- if the new cable drops were part of a pre-existing contract then -- if it was part of that, you should already have it as part of your E-rate process from before but something brand-new, you would need to get a new one so it's going to depend on like did you have a contract with a provider and say in the future we will want to do this, then it would be on that pre-existing one. 
If not you would get a new contract or agreement for the future cable drops that you're doing. 
So either by it could work. 
That would be something to work out with your provider on what it says in your contract over the wording of the agreement. 
USAC really just needs something in writing that explains what you were wanting to do. 
They use the word contract a lot but they also did and I do have that in another slide here lessen that a little to say or any legally binding agreement, something in writing. 
It can be a memo, an e-mail back and forth, anything legally binding that agrees that yes, we will do this would cover anything you want to apply for. 
So any other questions about the actual -- what's eligible? 
Hopefully, this has helped clear up some people's confusion about it. 
I try to put it in some easy language. 
>> That's great. 
You've done a great job of covering questions, as well. 
Thank you. 
>> No problem. 
All right. 
Now, I did say that category two handles how you get the money different than category one. 
Category one, which is your basic phone and Internet, is you get a discount on whatever the bill was. 
You pay the bill and it costs less or you get a bill that's already discounted. 
Category two services works differently. 
They came up with this, a new idea of doing it also as part of the modernization, hence the green text. 
Category two budgets. 
What they're doing now is you get a budget that is allotted to you that you can use over a five-year period. 
And for anything that you do that's category two. 
So at the beginning of the first year whenever you decided your first year to do it, it could have been 2015 when you started last year but it could be any time between now, 2019, you'll get a certain chunk of money that you can then use towards all of your future services that will fall in category two over the next five years. 
Potentially in five years you start again, but that hasn't been said yet. 
It's to be determined how it works out this time. 
Now, you can have services and products that come up, that actually cost you more than whatever your budget is given for E-rate purposes and that's fine. 
You'll just only get your discount on the amount up to what the budget says you'll get for E-rate. 
You're welcome to buy something way more expensive, you just realize you have to pay full for whatever is over the budget they're giving you. 
Now, how much do you get for your budget? 
For libraries it's based on the size of your building. 
Bigger libraries will get more money for their internal connections and wiring and whatnot and smaller libraries will get less. 
The basic cost is $2.30 times whatever your square feet is, total area of the library but there's a minimum of $9,200. 
That's for smaller libraries, if your library is 4,000 square feet or less, you'll always get $9,200 as the lowest they'll go. 
If you're over 4,000, it will be whatever the math comes out to. 
For larger cities they did add this in, it was in the second modernization order where they needed even more money so if you're in a city with a population with 250,000 or more, you'll get $5 per square foot. 
You take these numbers, do the math and that will figure out what your library budget is. 
Someone asked I assume if you have multiple branches, you add all square feet together. 
You do it actually individual buildings on its own and then when you do your E-rate application you'll list each individual building and what each of them are going to get. 
Each branch will do its own calculation. 
Right. 
How do you count square footage with two buildings on one property? 
You just look at what's inside each building and do each of their own individual math and then sej said, you guys both asked the same question, and then you'll see -- well, once you get to a future form, which I don't have screen shots of because it's not available yet, you'll specify which building is getting which of the services and which of the equipment. 
Okay. 
So example of the budget, for example, this is for a small library, in Nebraska we have lots and lots of mostly small libraries, so my example goes to that. 
Your library is 3,500 square feet. 
That times $2.30 per square foot comes out to $8,050. 
But for us, there's a $9,200 floor minimum so they get that $9,200 as their discount, that's their prediscount budget, and then you take whatever your rate is from your discount calculation that you did originally back at the beginning based on the school lunch numbers and your urban and rural status and apply that to that amount and that's how much money you'll actually get. 
In this case the library gets $4,600 because they have a 50% discount rate for their Internet. 
For their E-rate. 
Let's see. 
Before I go on to questions I'm going to go through here just a bit, how much is my budget? 
You can use your discount budget, your budget however, you like. 
If you have some big project in the very first year you can use it all up that first year and just be done and just not have any E-rate discount for the next four years. 
You can split it up evenly between each year or whatever you need to use each year. 
As you're doing your forms throughout the five years you will each year tell them how much you need to use that year and what it's on. 
Your budget is recalculated each year if the size of your library changes, not usually common. 
It doesn't go down. 
It might go up if you add something on to your library, it might be a different size suddenly but what you do is you figure out your budget to start with and then each year you tell USAC what you need money for, they track that and deduct that from your balance until it's gone, you would need to think over the five years, what do we need over the next five years so we can get a discount on those costs? 
Let's figure it out. 
You just remember you have to buy these things in the first place so you get to have money to buy these things over time. 
It's going to depend on your situation. 
You can use it, however, works best for you, just think what am I doing physically, Internet-wise, within the library for the next five years? 
The separate administrative office included in the square footage? 
I believe it would be if it's considered part of the library that you could include that in the square footage. 
I would double check that because I'm leaning towards yes but there's been a lot of back and forth in some of these discussions so I would check. 
Here's a question that might come up. 
Is there a minimum Internet or broadband speed? 
They're not saying you have to have a certainly level, no. 
When you do fill out your forms and you'll see that when you get to do them, they do ask you what it's going to be, they're not going to reject because it you don't have fast enough. 
They're using some of the information you supply on these forms to find out how much libraries are actually getting, libraries and schools, what are they getting? 
Is it good enough? 
But there is no rules or requirements about how fast your Internet has to be in order to get E-rate, no. 
It can be really, really slow, hopefully not terribly slow, but they don't have any rules. 
They won't say no because you're getting something, too, slow, no. 
Yes, about the administrative office, double check with USAC to make sure since I'm not sure off the top of my head. 
So that's how the category two budgets work. 
It's a little different, very different and it can be confusing. 
But with the forms that they have for you, where it calculates it all out for you, you can figure that out, entering information, and then they will track for you as I said how much you're using over the five years so you'll know and they'll know each year how much you have left to spend so any other questions about budgets in category two? 
Before I cruise along? 
>> I think you've covered it. 
>> Okay, all right. 
Now, there is -- let's see here. 
One other thing that I do tell libraries to look into, that you need to look into, before jumping into E-rate and that is CIPA. 
This is your Children's Internet Protection Act. 
There's also an update to do, the NCIPA that came out a few years ago. 
This is talking about having filters on your computers. 
In order to receive E-rate funds, for your Internet access and your internal connections so that you're getting the Internet to the library and all those internal category two equipment, you do have to be in compliance with the Children's Internet Protection Act. 
This is the act put into effect to protect minors from obscene and pornographic things on the Internet. 
Some libraries comply with this, no problem, put on the filters on the computers and cruise along. 
Some people do have philosophical issues with this, that it is censorship, freedom of information restriction, they do not like it. 
So it's going to vary from library to library, what your opinion of it is, what your community's opinion of it, maybe what your board's opinion of it is. 
What I say about CIPA is it's not really hard to comply with in order to get the E-rate money. 
It's a very -- our benefit, very vaguely written act. 
It's very short. 
About 14 pages long, not very long. 
And it's very simple and vague. 
They do not tell you what filters you have to use. 
They do not tell you what websites you have to block. 
They do not tell you at what level your Internet protection has to be at. 
Many software programs or Internet filtering programs have low security, medium, high, they just say you have to have one. 
That's your requirements there, you have to have your technology protection measure. 
The second item is your filter itself. 
It can be on each individual computer, it can be on your servers, it can be on your Internet provider's servers, somewhere. 
You have to have an Internet safety policy. 
You hopefully have one of these. 
What are people allowed to do and not do on your computers? 
Don't hack into our computers, don't do something illegal, that kind of thing. 
And you have to have a public meeting. 
Let people know in your community and announce and let them chat with you about we're thinking about doing this, what do you guys think? 
It's not very difficult to comply with it and have the filters and get the money and not impose on what your people using your library want to do. 
One thing that's very important to CIPA that I think a lot of people miss, you do also as part of the CIPA act, it says one of the requirements is that you have to have a way to turn off the filter when someone, adult, wants to do some bona fide legal research, wants to use the computer, you have to be able to turn it off. 
That's in the CIPA act. 
So you can totally let get to whatever they need to and still comply with it and get your E-rate money. 
So I say take a good look at this if you're not doing it already. 
USAC has information on their website and we've got the URL for you right there so definitely look into that. 
All right. 
Now onto the forms themselves. 
Now, we're going to get into the -- I'll show forms and I'm going to finally, you've been dying to see, the new interface you're going to be using to submit these forms. 
There are four basic forms, there we go, four forms that you always have to somehow have done. 
Three of the four you as a library always do. 
The fourth one it will vary and I'll explain that and there's a new form that it only has to be done once. 
Your 470, that's what you're thinking about applying for right now and I'm going to show you screen shots of doing that in the new system where you say I'm looking for somebody to provide me with this service and the next form is I've picked someone, phone Internet and here's who they are and the service we're getting. 
Then you wait and see if you're going to get approved. 
Once you are approved for the money you then tell USAC I'm getting the service thank you and then you decide how you want to get your bills, get your discount and that's that fourth form, the 472, 474, and let them know with that form how you would like to receive your money. 
The new form, the 498 is to provide bank information and I'll explain that in a second, too, to USAC about getting your direct reimbursement payments. 
Now, I have a timeline here, which is also provided as a handout as well that you should be able to print out of exactly what happens and the process. 
On the handout I put in the time of year all this happens as well by season. 
On here I have it a little by the month of the year. 
First form as I said, the 470 starts your request for service. 
You do that one first, file it about now, October, November, it's actually available already. 
You can do your first form right now if you want to. 
The second form is your 471. 
This is when you tell E-rate who you've picked as your provider, what the services are it's going to be, how much it's going to cost, what your discount percent is, all of that detailed information. 
People always ask me what's the deadline for these forms? 
And the answer is it varies. 
Each year the deadline and dates are different. 
And all of the deadlines for the 471 and 470 are based on the 471. 
It is only available for a certain amount of time, about three months, and it's called the application filing window. 
It's only available for those two or three months and the deadline for the 470 is based on when the end of that window is for the 471 because as you can see here you need to have your 470 out for at least 28 days before you can do your 471. 
You have to give time for service providers and companies to contact you to say we would like to provide you with the service you're looking for and FCC has said 28 days is that time. 
So once you know the deadline for the close of the window for the 471, you count back 28 days and you know the deadline for doing your 470. 
These dates have not been announced yet so we don't know what the deadlines are going to be. 
They'll announce them usually later in the year, December sometime we'll find out what we're talking about. 
After you do those first two forms, then you wait. 
And your form, your application is in their Program Integrity Assurance department where they review the applications. 
They contact you for more information if they need to. 
If they contact you, answer them right away. 
They need to know this information to give a correct answer to whether they're going to approve or deny your application. 
Then after they have reviewed the application and they've decided what they're going to do, they send you a funding commitment decision letter, that tells you if you've been approved or denied for your finished. 
That goes on for months and months. 
It doesn't come right away, they have time, they have 40, 50,000 applications they're doing on average last year. 
So they'll eventually get you your letter and you'll know that money has been set aside for you. 
After you get that, then you need to tell them great, the funding letter says money has been set aside for you. 
Sometimes, people think that means I'm done, I got my money, yay. 
No, that means they said this money has been set aside for you. 
You need to let them know that you want the money. 
It seems a little redundant but it's how it works. 
Then you immediately tell them yes, we do want it, you do the 46, that confirms that yes, the service is coming to us. 
Sometimes, situations might have change, you may have changed providers, decided not to do the E-rate and you might say no thanks we don't want it but that's why never to have to tell you with the 46 yes, we want it and then with the 472, 474, this is where you tell them how you want your money. 
You have a choice of getting reimbursed, paying the bills in full first and getting reimbursed afterwards or having a discount on your bills automatically every month. 
And tell them that. 
Got a couple of questions came in that I want to grab before I move along too far. 
CIPA public meetings and annual event? 
No, you have to do that public meeting or hearing once. 
Once you do it once you're good for the life of CIPA. 
It's only a one-time deal. 
The form that you only have to do once would be this 498, that's where you're providing the bank information, they do reimbursements by direct deposit into your library or city's bank account. 
That you only have to fill out once unless your bank information changes. 
It's not an annual thing you have to do. 
Once you've entered that information you're good as long as your bank information stays. 
The other forms, the first four, you need to do every year. 
Okay. 
So let's see here. 
Someone asked about the form 479. 
I don't have that in here. 
This is a letter, a form that has to do with doing consortium members certifying that they are in compliance with the Children's Internet Protection Act. 
So if you do have a consortium that you are running the application for, that is something you would have to have all of those members sign off on. 
So that's just a quickie answer for that. 
You can look up more information for that on the E-rate website if you want to know how it really needs to be done. 
Okay in what circumstances is it okay to order equipment or services prior to receiving a funding commitment letter? 
You can order the equipment and agree to your contracts before you get the funding commitment sure. 
You just have to be aware of the fact that you don't know if you're going to get your money yet. 
So that's just something to be aware of that you can go ahead and order it, after you've done your 471, that's when you can get your contracts going, start organized your equipment but you might not actually get the money so that would be something you have to be aware of. 
>> Christa I'm going to jump in really quick here. 
I know this is really confusing to folks but for those of you that are posting your questions for Christa to the Q&A panel, we reserve that panel for tech support questions. 
So that everyone sees your questions, I want to make sure that you have your chat window open, so if you don't yet see a window that says chat on the recognized side of your screen, go to the top of that panel on your right and click on the chat icon and that will open your chat window, and then you can post your questions directly to that window and Christa will be able to address them there. 
Thank you. 
>> I was looking at the chat and not the Q&A sorry. 
>> You shouldn't be looking at the Q&A, Christa. 
We wish we could rename it. 
Think of it only as tech support. 
Thank you. 
>> All right. 
I have a couple of other questions here but these questions you just asked me are going to be answered coming up soon so I am going to hold off on them. 
And we're going a little bit slower than I wanted to so I'm going to cruise along faster here. 
Next up is the new E-rate portal. 
This is what hopefully, you've heard a lot about. 
New interface forsmith all of your forms and doing all of your E-rate work. 
The acronym is EPC, it's pronounced "epic." 
So EPC is our new E-rate portal. 
We'll see how epic it actually is. 
It stands for E-rate productivity center. 
Starting with the upcoming funding year, everything will be done through this online interface now. 
There's a long URL for it and I'm going to show you how to quickly get to it from the main USAC website, as well. 
It's a new place where everything will be done now. 
There will be no more paper forms, there will be no more sending things in by fax or e-mail or anything. 
You can do everything through this new portal. 
All of your forms can be submitted here, all of your letters that you get back from E-rate telling you they received forms comes in here. 
Any questions from your program integrity assurance people asking you for more information, your responses go in here. 
You can ask USAC questions about things you just are confused about, their own customer service. 
Everything all in one place. 
All of your forms, all of your documentation, if you need to submit contracts along with your forms, if you need to submit bills, if they ask for any of that, that all is put in here and one place where you and E-rate, the USAC people and your service provider all have access to everything in there. 
Some great improvements to this, you can use it from any type of device. 
Even down to your little smart phone in your hand. 
Now, I would not recommend submitting your form on your smart phone. 
I think that would be too painful. 
But checking up on things, checking to see if you got a letter update for something, logging into it that way, sure but anything, tablet, laptop, smart phone, you can use anything and any browser. 
This is even more important. 
Previously anybody who's done this knows for some of the forms you had to be using Internet explorer only or the form would not work. 
It would not submit through, your certification would not go through, you would think you submitted it and you actually didn't and you might miss deadlines. 
Now, you can be on any device and use any browser you like to submit your forms. 
This portal is more flexible in that way. 
In the portal, library systems can update and store all of your information about all of your different branches and your individual libraries. 
Everything you input in there into your profile stays there and then whenever you submit a new form, it just automatically gets pulled into that form and pre-populates all of those fields. 
You don't have to reenter your name, address, phone number, contact person, all of that every single time. 
This includes the school lunch numbers, too. 
All of that you put in there, and then that gets pulled into your forms automatically. 
If you're doing consortia or statewide contract, you would be able to access and so all of the information about all of your individual members and all of their addresses, phone numbers, all of that will be in there and your consultants and service providers would have a list of everything they need rather than previously all of these things were in different places, you had to search somewhere else, you had to find the right place to look up something or have the information on your own, everything is in one place. 
Something else that will make many people happy, that pin number that you can never find, don't know what it is, it's a mismash of numbers and letters and symbols, won't be using that anymore, either. 
You'll have a user name and a password that you select to log into the EPC portal. 
So those pin numbers, you can feel free to lose it and not have to worry about that again for 2016 forward. 
Account administrators have been set up for this and you can create other users. 
If there are other people who need to get in to be able to access your forms or use them or put in information you can have different people have access to your EPC profile and at different levels, as you can see here. 
A full user will be able to fill out forms, submit them, file them, certify them, do everything, including updating any info about your organization. 
Maybe you have someone allowed to put in all the information for a form but does not have the authority to submit or certify it, someone else can enter all that info and a different person can log into that form that's ready to go and hit submit and certify. 
There's also view only where people can just get in and see what's going on in there but not do anything to your forms. 
If you've got state library consultants like myself that you want to look over your form before you submit it, let them goat into view, they won't be able to make any changes on your form, which is great but they can at least see what you've done and tell you that's right, or got to fix that, whatever. 
USAC creates an account for someone they've designated as the account administrator. 
This is the person at your library, they by default started with a person who submitted your funding year 2015 471 form, the second form of the process whoever did that one has been automatically assigned that and should have already received an e-mail about this. 
If you don't, you can always contact USAC and get one. 
If you're new to the program you can do the same thing, contact USAC's customer service and get someone set up to be your account administrator. 
That person then has control over the entire account and can decide other users and who's going to be using the system. 
There's different organization types just like you have been using E-rate, this would be based on who you are as the build entity, individual schools and libraries, the whole district, the library system, consortia, just like we've been using before will all have individual account administrators. 
Now to get into the new EPC E-rate productivity center, this is the shorter URL to go to, USAC.org/sl. 
They've got two places where they've linked it from their main home page. 
The E-rate productivity center at the top of the resources and tools section, and they've set up a nice light blue box at the bottom to let you know this is where we mean. 
Either of those links brings you here where you've got your log-in button, the dark gray button to get you in. 
Before I show you getting into there, you'll see below that is some additional resources. 
They have put a lot of help guides and information out there for using EPC. 
I strongly, strongly recommend reading through these guides or watching these videos. 
The videos are great. 
They are showing you exactly how to do it with screen captures. 
They're not very long, the videos go from anywhere from two minutes to the longest one is 10 minutes long. 
They'll show you how to do all of these things here and they have in all of their user guides screen shots of everything, as well. 
Whichever way works for you. 
You can go and in look at this information. 
You can see here they only have videos and guides going through form 470, not any of the other forms I mentioned, that is because those forms are not ready to use yet in EPC because well you don't need to do them yet as each of those forms are ready to use in the next year, user guides and tutorials will appear on here, as well. 
So now, let's see. 
I want to go in and show you some screen shots of how to get in and use your EPC. 
As I said, account administrators have been sent an e-mail. 
If you haven't gotten one, contact USAC and you can get them to set you up. 
Most of these e-mails went out in July so it would have been something with this subject heading, USAC EPC account creation, telling you your account has been created with the user name being your e-mail address, and that in order to get your account actually set up in there, you have to actually go through this forgot password option choice. 
It's not like some systems where you create an account or register, you go through the forgot password feature and that gets you to set up your own account. 
Once you click that link that's in the e-mail, the second one here for portal.USAC.org, it brings you right to their page where you have to quickly agree to these short terms of agreement to get into the system, then it gives you the log-in page. 
First, you put in your user name, your e-mail, no password because you don't have one yet and hit forgot password. 
It will bring you into the system where you can do the reset, request the password reset, put in your e-mail there, it then will send you a new e-mail that gives you a link to reset your passpered. 
This e-mail like many systems is only good for 15 minutes. 
Click on that big link where it will bring you where you can actually choose what you want your new password to be. 
There are some rules for this new password. 
Has to be eight characters long and you have to have a number, a letter, upper-case letter and lower case letter and at least one special character, something that's not number or letter. 
So you do have to come up with something but you get to come up with it yourself. 
It's not those unrememberrable ones that they sent out automatically for us for the PIN numbers. 
So once you've done this and set your new password, what you want your password to be, hopefully, you may now log in using your new passer with. 
That link will click you back toot log-in screen again where now, you actually type in the password you just made up for the system to get into EPC and sign in. 
The first thing you have to do when you sign in, though, the last bit of getting set up is to agree to the more in-depth terms and conditions that are within the EPC system and that link there brings you to the task of completing them where you have -- and here's the top of it, scroll down to the bottom and there's an accept button. 
Once you do that, you are in the system and you are at your landing page is what this is called. 
This is your home page for using EPC. 
Any time you need to get back to that, the blue and goal logo can get you back to here and this is where you track everything you're doing within the system. 
Across the top there's a menu and there's five options there, news, tasks, records, reports and actions. 
The news section is where they have updates about things going on in the system, new users you might have added, any of your letters notifying you that you've submitted forms, that will all go into here, they no longer mail those out. 
They all go in here. 
That's what the new section is for. 
Tasks is things you have to do. 
Forms and process, undone things, this is telling me that I was in the middle of creating a new form 470 so it's rhyming me you need to finish that. 
Records, this is where all of the information about you and your entities and any of that you can update and get to. 
Make sure all of this is correct before you start your 470, all of your basic entity information so you can have all that accurate in there. 
Reports, I don't have any reports yet. 
This is an area to be developed. 
Right now, it just gives you a link to pop back to your landing page. 
They're looking for input on what kinds of reports you might want to pull out of the system. 
And actions is the last one and this is things you can do in the system, other things, contacting their customer service, looking up forms, whistleblower, they do ask for input on that. 
Anybody with program violations. 
Back to your main landing page, with your own account, that would be your name there, your profile. 
You can update your profile and your settings, you can put in a little head shot of yourself if you want to. 
I haven't done that yet but you can. 
To the upper right you can manage your user profile, update all your name and address information. 
This is something that would need to be done if you're having a change in staff of who's in charge of your account, the account administrator, someone leaving, you would have to get the old person to come in here and update the information for the new person. 
If you have issues with that you can always contact USAC's customer service and have them help you out with getting a new person in the system if the old person left before doing that. 
You can also adjust your language, time zone settings here, as well. 
For adding new users to the system when you're on your landing page, there's a manage users link. 
It will get you to where you can select which party or organization you want to have this new user for, multiple libraries or something in your system, you would choose that. 
You can create a new user and I'm just showing you how to get in to create one, put in all the basic information for them. 
This is also where you set those user permissions I was talking about before and here I've zoomed into the section of the page at the bottom, the full rights, or the partial or view only rights. 
You can also manage your organizations, that was also a choice there from the top, on each organization, each library in your system you can modify their address information, contact person, all of that information in there, as well. 
All right. 
Now onto what I'm sure you really want to see is how to actually apply. 
How to start your application. 
Now as I mentioned earlier the only form that's available in here right now is the 470 the first form of the 70, that's the only one that we can show you a demo of. 
All the other ones will be added later but will have the similar look and feel as the 470, just with the information you need to submit those forms. 
There's an apply now option right there at the top, circled in red there and that brings you to the first part of your 470, basic library information. 
This is all pulled in, all this entity information you typed in before is pulled in from your profile. 
The only thing you do have to enter is giving your application a nickname. 
Call it whatever you want. 
The three buttons at the bottom, save and continue, that goes on to the next part of the form. 
Save and share this would be if you had someone else, one person who puts the information in the form and a different person who then can authorize to sign it and certify it. 
You save it and then share it to that particular person, let them know you've completed your part and then there's a discard form part button. 
This is good if you've started a form by accident or just don't want to use that one for some reason anymore, make sure you discard the forms you don't want to use anymore, because if you don't, it will keep sending you reminders to finish it. 
They will come up in your tasks saying you have to do this, you have to do this. 
So keep your forms cleaned up because I've started getting in that mine when I was testing it and I had to realize oh, I need to get rid of those, yeah. 
Then the second page when you save and continue, goes on also just automatically bringing in the type of library you are, who the recipients of service are, all of this is automatic. 
If you do need to change this, go back to your manage organizations section and update it there. 
This is all just inputted for you. 
Then you do have some information you might start putting in. 
If you have a consultant you're working with, someone who you pay to help you out to do your form, you would add that in your organization level. 
But here you say if you are the main contact person or not, I'm going to say yes and automatically pulls in my contact information. 
Boom. 
On into the next part where you choose which category of service you're going to be doing, we choose category two, I'm going to do a short example here of category one, not everything, just so you can see how the form works, choose category one, save and continue. 
Ask if there's an RFP. 
Requests for proposal are not required by E-rate but if you have one, that's fine. 
It can give more information to potential providers and if you want to, if you say, yes, here it will give you the option to then upload that proposal into your system here and it's ready there for everyone to view, the providers and USAC. 
We're going to say no just to get through this. 
Then you add your service request. 
What is the service you're looking for a discount on? 
There are currently none right now, click this green button. 
This gives you all the options for doing category one in the category one. 
Voice is at the bottom, that would be your telephone, your lit fiber, dark fiber, cell service. 
The Internet can be confusing. 
There's transport only, no ISP service, Internet access and transport and Internet access with ISP only. 
The difference between these is Internet access, ISP service only is your basic Internet, just the Internet section coming into the building. 
Your monthly bill. 
Transport means if you have multiple buildings in library buildings you need to get it to, it's through a WAN, the wide area network, that would be transport. 
After you've gotten the Internet to your main location, getting it out to the other locations if you have multiple buildings. 
It can be separate, obviously, or it can be bundled together so whichever way your library service provider does it. 
Yes, it was confusing, someone said yes. 
Of I hope I helped with that. 
We're going to do a basic Internet access here. 
They do ask you what is your minimum and maximum going to be from your provider. 
As I said earlier there is no requirements of what it should be but they do want to know what you're going to be wanting. 
How many buildings it's going to serve and if you're also looking for some sort of installation or maintenance along with this service. 
Then you can put in your narrative. 
This was where -- if you've done E-rate before, your item 21 attachment, that's what all this is is part of the form now and you just type in here I wrote here monthly Internet access for our public library. 
It doesn't really need much explanation. 
It's kind of self-explanatory but in other situations you might need to describe a little better what you're doing and you can see above it shows you what you chose. 
There's an installment plan for the nondiscounted portion of your bill. 
If you want to you can set up one of those with your provider meaning you pay monthly bills instead of all at once. 
Then you can put in if you have a technical contact person. 
If you have a separate person who's in charge of any technical issues, you can have that information put in. 
You can enter their information manually or have them as a user already in the EPC system, whichever works for you. 
State or local procurement, this is something new from last year, as well. 
Basically, are there any rules in your state that restrict how you can provide pricing information or how you can do procurements, how you can get services? 
You would want to say yes to that if you have that and provide that information, if you don't, you say no. 
That's the end of the basic info. 
Now, your choice is to review the FCC form 470, you see that button has changed. 
It generates a PDF for you that you can then look at online or print out. 
Once it's done it for a minute or so you hit that refresh button, the green button and it gives you a link, the blue link there to open up your PDF. 
So you can see exactly what it looks like as a form, you can print it out if you want it for your records but it's also saved in the system. 
It has what you put in as your request, your technical contact here, and once you've looked at that and said it's all right then you check this box certifying the form saying that yes, I want this certification, it's all legal and submit and you continue the certification. 
If you notice before you check that box that continue to certification button was grayed out, you couldn't use it. 
Once you've checked it you can go on to your certification. 
It confirms are you sure you want to do this? 
Basically. 
And then you see the certification. 
This is all the checkboxes you've always had to check off. 
I've just blown that up a bit so you can see all the different boxes you've got to check. 
If you don't check all of them it won't let you do the certified green button at the bottom. 
And then it tells you when you try to certify any false statements this is all legal you've got to make sure you're the person that's supposed to be doing this. 
And then you're done. 
It shows that you've certified the form, and then when you go back to your landing page you'll see at the bottom and I'll blow this up that you now have some forms in there that you are working on. 
When I blow it up I've got two, one that's incomplete because I started working on it and didn't finish it and here's the one that's certified, the second one that means it's done and submitted. 
You can click on the nickname there, the hot link for that and it will show you the HTML version of your form, same information in the PDF just in there in the system. 
Also, now, pretty much immediately, in your news section, you now have your receipt and acknowledgment letter is in here. 
They automatically send this saying we got your form and this gives you your allowable contract date, that means the 28 days you have before you can do your 471, it tells you what it is. 
I did this one yesterday so it says November 25th is the date that I can first do my 471. 
As long as the window is open. 
So that's just a quick run-through of what the EPC system looks like. 
You'll get a lot more into that when you're doing the 471 and your other form but I just wanted to show you all of that in there. 
Now, some questions about EPC while we're here at this point? 
I can do that. 
>> I think let's go ahead and keep on going so -- we're collecting questions so we'll get to them at the end and if not we can follow up. 
I think we should continue, thanks. 
>> No problem. 
All right. 
So what I want to do now, that was just the new system. 
You're going to be going into that starting with this year for everything, no more on the website, online forms, no more paper forms for anything. 
Everything is online now. 
What I want to do no is show you some basic information about each of these forms. 
The 470 is to open your competitive bidding process. 
You're actually saying to the world or service providers who are out there we're looking for someone to give us this service. 
You put in what kind of service you're looking for, like I just did in the form and what library you want it for. 
As I said the 28 days, you have to leave this open before you choose who your provider will be. 
If you get multiple responses, multiple bids, you've got to track them and you've got to do a competitive bidding process and I'll show you exactly what that looks like next. 
There's one time you don't have to do a 470, this is something new, if you can find this great deal they're trying to convince providers to get in and get involved in E-rate. 
If there is a provider out there that gives you Internet of at least 100 megabits per second for $300 or less per month, you don't have to do that 470 and say we're looking for someone. 
If you can find someone who gives you this you can skip and wait and start off with the 471 form saying we found someone and we want to go with them. 
So look for this. 
If you don't see one, try and talk to your providers and see if they'll give you this. 
After you submit your 470, you can make any changes and it gives you your 28 days to let you know when you can do your 471. 
After the 28 days have passed, that's when you can do your competitive bidding. 
This is when you just take any of the bids if you've got multiple ones and comparing them to decide what you're going to go with. 
Basically, they're looking for you to do the most cost effective with price being most important but not the only thing. 
They know just more than things than price are what you should use. 
You never do something on price alone. 
And I've got here a chart, this is what explained it to me best when I was trying to learn this myself. 
Multiple vendors that have contacted you, you assign points to each of the things that matter to you, price, previous experience, have you worked with them before, are they your current vendor, and anything that matters to you can go in here. 
These are some examples. 
For example, if you know their customer service record, that might be a factor. 
You've heard bad things about them, they work with other business in town and are terrible, that can be a criteria and you assign a point value, and then you look at each of the bids that you've received, this is only if you've received multiple and then assign them points. 
You can see here, vendor number two had a full 30 of the price, means they were the cheapest but with all of the factors that matter to you taken into consideration, vendor number three got the most points and you can pick them, even though they were not just the cheapest. 
You have lots of things you can take into consideration. 
What USAC wants you to do is just document all of this. 
This is just one way to do it. 
You can have other ways, a memo you write yourself, an e-mail that you explain this is what we've decided, whatever, they just want you to track this is what you did. 
471, we've picked a provider, here's our discount information. 
As I said before, the 28 days must be gone past, some of these I'm going to flip through fast. 
FCC registration number, you've used this the last couple of years on your forms already. 
Here's a link if you need to look up your library's or get a new one if you have not done E-rate before, this is a new number that you might not know about, not know if your library has one, I didn't know we had one, I had to look it up. 
And then you are putting together your 471 funding request numbers are assigned to each of the requests. 
Your phone requests, your Internet requests, your wiring requests, your router requests, they each get a different funding request number assigned to them. 
This is a number that USAC will use to say we want more information, we need to know more about this, they'll say I'm looking at funding request number 123456. 
So keep track of what that is. 
SPIN numbers, that's the -- service providers get numbers, it's just assigned to them. 
Check with your provider to make sure you're using the right one. 
Then you'll get a letter as well from there saying that they've received it, same thing, it will go into your news section of your EPC account and you can make any changes if you want to there. 
Then your application goes into review, I went through this in the timeline where they check for all the different things that could be important to the application, is everything correct, are you doing everything right, is everything legal? 
Program integrity insurance will be who will call you about these things, call or e-mail you, contact you through epic and then when they've decided what they're going to do they give you that funding commitment decision letter. 
It will tell you if you're funded or not and you may receive more than one depending on how they've broken out your application, so pay attention. 
This information saused to complete the next form, your 486. 
This is where you say yes, our services have started or will be starting soon and we're definitely going with them, it's all good to go, everything you need for the 46 is on that fung commitment letter. 
All you need to do is pull out that letter, look at it and copy the information into the right places in your 486, probably one of the easiest forms to do because you don't have to know anything original for it, just copy what it says in the funding commitment decision letter. 
You've got 120 days to submit this so you have some time. 
There's no reason to wait, as soon as you want it, get it in there. 
The sooner you get this form done, the sooner you'll start getting your money. 
And then they'll also give you a letter for that. 
The last form of the process is your invoicing form. 
This is where you decide and tell USAC how you want your money. 
You have a choice of getting a reimbursement after you've paid your bills in full or having a discount on your bill. 
If you're getting a reimbursement, you submit the BEAR form, build entity applicant reimbursement. 
If you want to get a form to your service provider, they submit the 474, the service provider invoice. 
You have 120 days, they have lots of similar deadlines here, to actually submit this for the BEAR form, 120 days after the last service date, the June 30th of any year. 
The BEAR form is pay the bills in full, and then say give us our reimbursement. 
The SPI, as you get your monthly bills, they'll be automatically discounted from the provider and you won't have to do anything after that, it comes at a discount to start with. 
The new thing coming out with the BEAR, the reimbursement, is direct reimbursements from USAC. 
It used to be the process was you would submit the BEAR, USAC would send the discount money to your service provider, and your service provider would cut you a check. 
They are eliminating the middle man of the service provider because it didn't make sense because they didn't really have anything to do with this particular thing, you should be getting your money so now, USAC will be sending it directly to you. 
They will only be doing it as electronic bank transfers, direct deposits into your bank account, no checks. 
So that is something you're going to have to think about is where this money goes, if it goes into the library's own account, maybe the library foundation has an account or with the city? 
If the city gets this money will it be passed on to the library for use? 
It needs to be used just for the library purposes. 
This will be a discussion that you will have to have and figure out what bank account you have, and where the money actually goes, ask how you make sure it gets to the library. 
BEAR forms also only be online. 
They were paper forms until the last year. 
Everything online through EPC. 
The new form you have to do to give them your bank account information is this 498. 
Just have to do it once, give them your banking information and it will be what will be used whenever you submit the BEAR to get your reimbursement. 
The form will become available in January so you can get it done ahead of time and just have it in there and ready to go whenever you're ready to do a BEAR which won't be until next year sometime later next year. 
Basic banking information, the usual that you do for a direct deposit, contact person, bank information, routeing numbers, all of that, you will need to know your library or city's federal ID number, that's something that's usually used for payroll so you should have one of those if you pay people. 
So you'll have to get a DUNS number, it comes from Dun & Bradstreet, a business company that uses it to identify businesses. 
It's free as long as we're doing a federal form which E-rate is. 
They've got a website where you can check and see if you have one already. 
They have a website where you can apply for one. 
After you do your BEAR, you'll get a notification letter in the system and you'll also start getting quarterly reports that will tell you when money has been sent out, when your BEAR has been disbursed to you and when the service provider has been given the money that they're supposed to be passing on to you. 
Check your bills. 
Compare it to this report. 
Make sure that you are getting the discount that you are supposed to be getting. 
And that's the last bit of doing the forms. 
I think we can do questions now because the rest of my slides are all about more information and getting help. 
So if people want to do some specific questions let's get to them. 
>> Great thanks Christa, this is Kendra Morgan with WebJunction and this was a little trip down memory lane for me with being an E-rate coordinator and it really seems like there have been some good improvements. 
I know that soup to nuts, it can feel very overwhelming but process gets spread out over months so I would encourage the libraries to take advantage of this opportunity. 
>> I explain it that way, too. 
It is an ongoing process but it's only a certain time of year each of these forms need to be paid attention to. 
So you do one, you wait three months, do the next one, sit back and wait three months and on and on. 
>> Yeah. 
So it's not as overwhelming when it's piecemeal. 
One of the things that came in about questions was the issue of pre-existing contracts and if the library had one in place, do they still have to put things out to bid? 
>> It depends. 
If you have a multi-year contract where you have already contracted with someone for three years, you don't have to do a 470 for that because you already did that the first year of that contract. 
>> That's true only if they did a 470 with that original contract, correct? 
>> Exactly right. 
If you did a 470 with that original contract and it was a contract that stated we are going with this provided for two or three, four years, then you don't have to do it all again. 
If you have a month to month deal with somebody or just one-year contract, then us you have to do it every year to restart up that again with E-rate. 
>> And what about a library that has an existing contract, is looking at applying for the first time and can they still grandfather in that contract? 
Is there an option for them to do that? 
>> Not exactly. 
What I would say is I would use that -- the competitive bidding chart that I gave you and put in there that previous experience with the provider is very important. 
The comparison. 
Price had the most points but prior experience, that could be like 25 points. 
And you can give them the full 25 points for that because they're the one you have had the most previous experience with and when it compares officially to the other ones, it wins, vendor two, zero experience with. 
So there's not a grandfathering in but use this to make that important to you as part of your decision making. 
>> Good. 
And what about people who put a clause in their contracts that the contract would be void if their E-rate application isn't funded? 
Is that something that's allowable? 
>> Oh! 
Basically, that's kind of a covering your butt thing for the library that if we don't get E-rate, we can't afford this so we would have to back out. 
>> It seems like something they should talk to their lawyers about, as long as the vendor signs off on it they would be fine? 
>> Yeah, because if you're not going to get the money, you can't afford it, you'll have to go some other way. 
You have to make sure you have a backup for what that service is. 
I mean, as of the 471, you can start signing your contracts but that's also like I said yeah, if you don't know you're going to get your money yet, that's the problem. 
So I would say yeah double check with a lawyer and maybe with USAC to ask about that one, that's one I am not sure off the top of my head about. 
>> Sounds good thank you. 
So when it comes to the EPC system there are a couple of questions that came in about that, one was will the library be contacted via EPC when it's time for them to do the next task or if there's a follow-up required? 
>> In some cases yes. 
That's what the tasks are. 
This isn't going to be something that you're going to need make this part of your -- maybe not daily but weekly process is checking EPC and see if there's something coming in. 
They will send you e-mail notification copies of things as well, too, so, for example, I actually made a change to my personal account there and it made the change, I got a thing in my news telling me the change had been made but I also got an e-mail sent to my e-mail address. 
So there's lots of backups in that way and that they will give you some notifications. 
Now, I did see someone said will they let us know when the next form is due? 
Not necessarily. 
That's something you need to pay attention to yourself and know when is the window opening for the 471, what are the dates? 
Check that out yourself to make sure you're on top of that. 
>> Great. 
>> Are and that's posted to the USAC website, and for here in Nebraska I announced it to our libraries, in your states you may have someone who's helping you do it to keep track of what's coming up next. 
>> Okay. 
And the second EPC question was whether or not EPC is designed to save all of the forms for the 10-year record retention period. 
>> Oh, yes, sorry absolutely yes. 
You need to save everything that you do with the E-rate now for 10 years, meaning going back 10 years from the current date but that was a question someone asked in our training. 
They are built to keep that going for you for 10 years in there, yep. 
It is something that's online. 
If you have ability, it wouldn't hurt to keep duplicates on your side. 
If you want to, you can say it's all on you USAC, and it will be in there for the 10 years. 
>> Great. 
So talking about the form 470 with category two investments, do you have to lift what you will be using the money for and do you have to do bidding for those services? 
>> Yes, for the 470 yes, it works the same way for category two as one. 
You would have to think what am I going to be using this money for and put it on your 470 but you really need to think about just the first year because each year you might have something new and that budget is good for five years. 
So you can use it each year for whatever you need to. 
But it does go through the same kind of bidding process. 
For equipment, though, you can, obviously, as I said get things through Amazon and those kinds of places so those equipments, it's a little bit different in that you don't have someone, Amazon doesn't come to you and say I want to sell you this router. 
That does work a little differently. 
It's going to vary whether it's a service from a provider or a piece of equipment. 
>> So two more quick ones. 
One is if the library wants to now apply for category two after doing category one, they just have to start with the form 470 for category two? 
>> Right yep yep just do a new one for that. 
>> And then -- 
>> And you can have multiple 470s and 71s out there, too. 
If you decide to do category one and next month, put in another 470. 
>> Wonderful. 
Well, that brings us to the end of our session and we're so appreciative of your expertise and sharing this time and I know a lot of libraries throughout the country have access to a state E-rate coordinator but you appreciate you putting this information together and helping us to explain the ins and outs of the program and give people a better sense of what they can expect and I do encourage people to take advantage of these discounts. 
They are there and they can make a really big difference to your budget. 
>> Yeah, look at this link to find who your state public library person is for E-rate. 
This ALA keeps this up to date, a couple of times a year, they contact us and find out who the current person is. 
>> That's great. 
>> Excellent. 
Thank you so much Christa. 
And Kendra and to all of you. 
I know this was a meaty session. 
All of Christa's slides are available and all of the handouts she provided and the link. 
We'll be sure and let you know when the full recording is posted and we again appreciate all the great work you're doing in libraries, as well. 
Thanks so much. 
>> Thank you.