Minutes from the Wednesday Service Provider Conference Call
January 15, 2003

RALs FOR FY2003 TO BE MAILED NEXT WEEK

We will mail the first Receipt Acknowledgment Letters (RALs) for Funding Year 2003 early in the week of January 20, 2003. They will be printed on yellow paper. Please read them carefully; we have included additional information in the text of the RAL.

FORM 471 INTERVIEW FORMAT

The Form 471 Interview interface can now be used to file the Form 471 online. This interface was developed as an alternate way to file the Form 471 online for applicants with relatively simple applications. The system will only ask questions that are necessary to complete the form based on the application type and other information provided by the applicant. The Form 471 Interview is designed for individual schools, school districts with fewer than 25 schools, individual libraries, and library systems with fewer than 25 outlets/branches.

FORM 471 FILING WINDOW DEADLINE

As a reminder, the deadline for the Funding Year 2003 Form 471 application filing window is Thursday, February 6, 2003 at 11:59 PM EST.

INVOICE DEADLINE FOR CERTAIN NON-RECURRING SERVICES - JANUARY 28, 2003

If the last date your non-recurring services could be delivered and/or installed was September 30, 2002, the deadline for postmark or receipt of invoices for those services is generally January 28, 2003. This applies to non-recurring services for Funding Request Numbers (FRNs) for ALL funding years with a September 30, 2002 delivery deadline and for which a Form 486 has been certified. For more details, please review the Invoice Deadline Reminder (1/3/03) posted in the What's New section of the SLD web site.

SERVICE PROVIDER CERTIFICATIONS (FORM 473) TO BE REQUIRED FOR BEARs (FORM 472)

The SLD is moving to require that a Service Provider Annual Certification (SPAC) Form 473 be on file for a funding year before payment can be made on an invoice for that funding year. Invoices include both Forms 472 (BEAR Forms) and Forms 474 (SPI Forms). While BEARs have been processed without regard to the presence of a SPAC from the service provider, that practice will be discontinued. We will put a notice up on the web site notifying applicants and service providers of the date this will take effect.

PDF VERSIONS OF INVOICES (FORMS 472 AND 474)

We are moving to a PDF format for all paper forms to allow for more efficient processing. You can review the current paper Form 486 and Form 471 for examples of this scannable format. We will now start working on the Form 472 (BEAR Form) and the Form 474 (SPI Form). You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader version 5.0 or higher to access these forms.

FUNDING COMMITMENTS UPDATES

We have issued two waves since the last call. For Wave 19, we issued FCDLs dated 12/30/02 for over $76.9 million in funding commitments. For Wave 20, we issued FCDLs dated 1/13/03 for just under $25.9 million in funding commitments. Waves will continue to be issued on our regular schedule every two weeks.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Q	Have any funding years been closed out yet?
A	No.

Q	Are you running appeal commitment waves with regular waves?
A	No, the system has separate modules for the two types of commitments. We are attempting to run appeal waves on a monthly schedule (first funding year in the first week, second funding year in the second week, and so on) if any are ready for commitment. However, we may not be able to run any appeal waves in the month of January 2003.

Q	Are the waves smaller because of a bottleneck in processing forms?
A	We run waves every two weeks on all reviewed applications that are ready for commitment. Most remaining applications have been undergoing more intensive selective reviews, and those are being completed in batches now.

Q	What is the amount of funds remaining to be committed for Funding Year 2002?
A	We are authorized to commit up to $2.7 billion, but cannot disburse more than $2.25 billion.

Q	If we haven't heard news for Funding Year 2002, can we reapply for the same services in Funding Year 2003?
A	We have posted a notice on our web site about how to deal with this issue. For more information, please refer to the Filing Option for Applicants with Pending FY 2002 Applications (1/21/03) posted in the What's New section of the SLD web site. We do ask that applicants do this in a way that they can easily cancel the Funding Year 2003 request once they know whether their Funding Year 2002 application has been funded.

Q	What is causing the smaller size of recent waves?
A	Applications for Funding Year 2002 that have not yet been funded are most likely undergoing additional review for compliance with program rules. In some cases, we are waiting for a response from the applicant.

Q	How many more waves can we expect?
A	We don't know, but we are working hard to complete the process. We will continue to issue a wave every two weeks.

Q	What portion of the remaining funds for Funding Year 2002 will be committed to Internal Connections funding requests?
A	While we must make various assumptions to estimate the figure, we expect it will be more than $600 million.

Content Last Modified: May 1, 2003

Minutes from the Wednesday Service Provider Conference Call January 15, 2003