Pack-O-Rama ‘75 Update

http://www.disastours.com/newpack.html
Back in 1975, I was in a Cub Scout ‘pack’ (260) that had various ‘dens’ throught the Willow Glen area of San Jose. Each year, the Boy Scouts would throw a ‘Pack O Rama’ at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds as a way to introduce the community to scouting, and to let other troops try to ‘out do’ each other at trade-show like boothes within the convention hall.

For 1975, our pack produced a video featuring each den, to be played every 20 minutes at our booth. Video was new back then, and to have a fully produced presentation was a big deal. The pack 260 presentation was in black and white, no audio, and used hand-held cards to provide narration. It was a blast to film, and I almost got someone killed during one of the scenes in “Bike Safety,” but that is another story.

(techie stuff)

The raw footage was shot on 1/2″ EIAJ tape, which only had a resolution of about 240 lines (a normal NTSC TV has 525 lines). The equipment needed to be powered by 110volts, so the camera was never mounted in a car, or more than 50′ from an electrical outlet. The footage was edited (by hand) to 3/4″ umatic. This 3/4″ master is the only surviving copy of the event, all of the 1/2 reel to reel footage has been lost/discarded over time, as well as the backup master. Time has been kind to this tape; I have had it in my posession since 1977 and had not played it until four years ago when I got my first umatic deck. I quickly encoded a copy, since I did not know how the tape would hold up after 30 years of storage. It looked OK, so I sent a copy to a few friends.

(/techie stuff)

Fast forward to February 25th, 2006. I have finaly added a soundtrack, name titles/credits, and even some sound effects to the video to give it new sparkle. I have tried to adjust the contrast on some of the title cards, but there are limitations to what was possible. This new version is now hosted at http://www.disastours.com/newpack.html and I encourage all of y’all to take a look at Cub Scouting in the mid 1970s. This video has not been seen by the general public in over 30 years….

Things that Annoy Me (part 1 of 200)

People who don’t use their turn signals
Illegal immigrants getting low-interest home loans in San Diego
Schools abusing the competitive bidding requirements of the ERATE program
People who drone, and drone and drone and drone on about nothing.
Anyone who drives a car called “Hummer”

Federal ERATE Program: Basic Maintenance Warranty Problems

(rant on)

Some of you may know that I work in a company that provides services to schools and libraries. We do this work when contracted by the school district to solve a certain technology issue, or are called in to help strategize one or more technology paths that are right for the school.
The schools pay for this work via various budgets at their disposal. One of these is the Federal E-RATE program, overseen by the Federal Communications Comission (FCC), and operated by the Schools and Libraries Division (SLD) of the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC).

The actual funding year runs from July 1 to June 30.

The short version of the complex E-RATE process is this:

1. School Develops a Technology Plan
2. School determines what type of technology they will need to implement the plan (or part of it, over the next year), broken into three major catagories: Telecommunications and Internet Access
   (T-1 lines, ISP, EMAIL fees, etc..), Internal Connections (switches, routers, cabling), and Basic Maintenancebreak/fix for eligible items).
3. School lists these items on a Form 470 and posts them on a website for all vendors to evaluate and bid on. This is known as the competitive bidding process, and generally happens between the last week in November and the second week of January.
4. After 28 days, school posts form 471 to the SLD, identifying the winning bidder(s), along with
   copies of contracts and other supporting documents (also known as an Item 21 Attachment). The last date to post a 471 is usually in mid-February.
   Starting at the end of March, schools are notified whether they were funded, non-funded, or a combination of both. This notification first starts with Internet Access, and winds its way down to Basic Maintenance. Some schools will not be notified of their funding until April of the following year, some not for some time after that. Schools begin purchasing equipment through Service Providers, who bill the school for their discounted amount (10%) and the E-RATE program for the remainder (90%).

And that is is the SIMPLIFIED version. What you may or may not see is a nasty problem of time overlap/underlap/program problems:

Here is an example, no school district is named, but this happens to hundreds of schools each year throughout the contry:

A district requests several routers, 75 switches, and several racks, and a series of warranty renewals for existing equipment in November 2000 for purchase starting July 1, 2001, but not be notified that they can purchase it until April 2002. In late April they being to purchase the equipment, but with a backlog from a manufacturer, the hardware doesn’t arrive until the end of May, 18 months later. Of course, when they get approval, the ’service start date’ or the day when they could start purchasing goods and services under the funding, was for July 1 of the funding year, 9 months in the past. The SLD sees that this can be a problem, so any Internal Connections requests funded after March 1 get an automatic extension until September 30 of the following year. A very nice and fair gesture.
But…

The real icing happens when the schools try to order the warranty contracts. This is not a rich school, so they did not risk purchasing any equipment or services until their funding was approved by the E-RATE program. Not a problem right? Wrong. Maintenance contracts don’t get extended like Internal Connections elements, so what really happens? This:
School Purchases maintenance contract (one year contract) from the service provider on April 20.

The Service Provider pays 100% to the manufacturer for the service contract, but can only bill back 1/6th of the cost, since the funding year ends in two months (services MUST be delivered within the funding year for maintenance, no extensions).

The Service provider bills the applicant 10% of the 1/6th that he/she is able to bill the SLD.

Result: The school gets screwed by going without break/fix/software maintenance coverage for 10 of the 12 program months and the service provider gets screwed because he/she loses 5/6ths of every maintenance contract (hint: you can’t markup a maintenance contract from “C” even 5% and be competitive in the market). Even worse, the SLD will likely reject the invoice from the service provider anyway, since the contract is a year and the funding year ends in two months. If this happens, the Service Provider is out 100% and the school has no maintenance coverage. Even worse again, the school can’t use ANY of the warranty services after two months, as it will be out of the funding year.

The SLD’s guidance (on February 8th, 2006) on this is to simply modify your 470 to inidicate that you are seeking a multi-year contract. Too bad this information was provided too late to make a difference for this funding year. Or the last one.

How to fix this? Simple, allow Basic Maintenance to be extended if funded after JANUARY 1ST of the funding year. If a school is getting a large amount of E-RATE funding, it means that they are in a low-income area. Sure, the school could gamble with funds and purchase the contracts on July 1st, and HOPE that they get funded, but what if they DON’T get funded? Are service providers simply going to eat the costs of the contracts and man hours? NO, they are going to go after the schools to pay the full non-discounted amount. If the schools had this money, they wouldn’t need the ERATE program to begin with.
These schools have already purchased hardware via this program in the past, and it simply MAKES SENSE to provide warranty support on it. Not doing so is simply waste, fraud, and abuse of the E-RATE program and the American tax payer.

SLD, EXTEND BASIC MAINTENANCE SERVICES LIKE YOU DO INTERNAL CONNECTIONS.

(rant off)