On April 24, 2017, USAC Schools & Libraries Committee held their quarterly board meeting. The SLD is continuing to work on issuing pending FY2016 commitments and ensuring that applicants have a better user experience with E-rate Productivity Portal (EPC) for FY2017. The SLD reported that due to the shorter FY2017 filing window, applicants will need to increase their pace of filing their FY2017 Form 471 applications in order to reach FY2016 totals.
The Board also discussed the following issues:
- The Committee approved the minutes from the January 30, 2017 meeting;
- The Committee approved the Schools and Libraries Support Mechanism 3rd Quarter 2017 Programmatic Budget;
- The Committee approved the Demand Projection for the May 2, 2017 FCC Filing;
- The Committee approved 12 USAC Internal Audit Division Schools and Libraries Support Mechanism Beneficiary Audit Reports. In one of the audits the SLD is seeking to recover $1.8 million due to non-compliance issues, however the applicant disagrees with the findings;
- The SLD is focusing on completion of FY2016 applications;
- The SLD is working to eliminate key FY2016 technical issues within EPC and reported that number of applicants blocked by technical issues in FY2016 has been reduced from 1,300 to less than 400;
- There are 678 applications on a “legal hold” which accounts for 39% of the remaining applications;
- There are 265 pending Dark Fiber applications totaling $18.4 million;
- There are 87 pending Lit Fiber applications totaling $20.4 million;
- There are 183 pending Self-Provisioned applications totaling $66.1 million
Note: The information above are not the official minutes from the meeting, but simply notes from Funds For Learning. The official minutes for this meeting, as well as minutes from previous meetings, can be found here.
