January 19, 2017

Note that the USAC will be closed Friday, January 20, 2017.

Commitments for Funding Year 2016

Funding Year 2016. USAC is scheduled to release Funding Year (FY) 2016 Wave 31 Funding Commitment Decision Letters (FCDLs) next week. This wave includes commitments for approved applications for all service types and at all discount levels. As of January 19, FY2016 commitments total over $1.92 billion. 

On the date the FCDLs are issued, you can access your FCDL notification from the Notifications section of your landing page in the E-rate Productivity Center (EPC).

Additional Information on Profile Updates in EPC

During the Program Integrity Assurance (PIA) review of FY2016 applications, some reviewers identified changes to applicant profile information that were required to successfully process the application. The reviewers updated those FCC Form(s) 471 but did not update the actual applicant profiles.

In last week's SL News Brief, we described the process we are following to update the applicant profiles where PIA identified changes.

• Last week, we sent an email to applicants who made changes to their profiles after July 21, 2016 notifying them that our updates would overwrite those changes. Those applicants now have until January 26 to inform us that they do not want us to proceed with our changes.
• We will send an email to applicants who did not make changes to their profiles informing them that we have made our updates.
• If no changes were made to your profile, no action is required.

If your profile has been updated, you have two options to review changes to your profile information – the Modifications menu item and the Entity Download Tool.

Modifications menu item

Each entity profile page in the E-rate Productivity Center has a menu item in the left-hand column labeled "Modifications." When you click this item, you will see two sections on the Modifications page:

• The first section, labeled "Modifications by User," lists all of the modifications you or other users on your organization have made to this specific entity. When you make a modification, remember to use a nickname that is clear, concise, and descriptive, as this list does not provide the details of the modification.
• The second section, labeled "Modifications by System," lists all of the modifications USAC copied to this specific entity. Each entry includes a link to the list of the updated fields and displays the current and original data value so you can compare the information.

Modifications in these lists are specific to the entity. In other words, a school district or library system would have to go to its profile page and the profile pages of each of its schools or library branches to review all of the modifications.

Entity Download Tool

The Entity Download Tool is now available on the Tools page of the USAC website. This tool displays most of the fields contained in entity profiles. The user guide – which is posted together with the tool itself – includes a list of the fields contained in the tool.

With this tool, you can download all of the entities you would like to review. The tool will not specifically identify the fields that have been changed, but it will provide the date of the last update and the name of the user who performed the update.

Note that you must download the entity information for an entire state. You can then sort the results and concentrate only on the entities you want to review.

Next steps

We strongly suggest that all applicants refrain from making additional changes to their profiles until we have completed this process. Because we sometimes become aware of changes after a funding wave runs, we may still identify changes in the near future. Again, we will communicate with any affected applicants by email if we become aware of those changes.

We will also provide a notification when we have completed this process so that applicants can go into their profiles and make any necessary updates in preparation for the opening of the FY2017 application filing window.