What E-Rate's done to me

I thought I'd share my favorite South Park avatar. I like to use it to show what's become of me after working with E-Rate for the past 7+ years.

tech planning q & a from sld news briefs

I just discovered SLD news briefs yesterday. Until then, I'd thought that all the important news was accessible via the Important Notice and/or Latest News links on the SLD homepage. I've asked if they could create an RSS feed. If so, I can add them to this blog.

Anyway, I found more information about technology planning in a news brief from 9/29/2006:

Technology Planning Questions from the Field

As part of USAC’s follow-up activities for the regional training sessions being conducted around the country this fall, answers to selected questions from the training sessions will be included in News Briefs to provide more information on the topics being discussed. Below are questions received from attendees on various aspects of technology planning.

Q. For purposes of E-rate, what is the date of my technology plan?

A. Your technology plan has two important dates. They are:

Creation date. This is the date that your technology plan is first created or written. It must be before the date that your Form 470 is filed, as the Form 470 must be based on the information contained in the technology plan.

Approved date. This is the date that your technology plan is approved by a USAC-certified Technology Plan Approver. Your approval letter or other communication of approval, such as an email, contains your approved date. Your plan is considered to be in effect from the approved date until the date it expires.

Q. My technology plan expires on June 30, 2007. Do I need a new plan for FY2007?

A. Yes. Your technology plan must be in effect during the period you receive discounted services. Having an approved plan when you file your Form 471 is not sufficient if that plan expires before the start of the funding year for which you are applying.

Q. Do I need a new technology plan if I want to get something that’s not in my current plan?

A. It depends. If the products, services, or other technologies that you want are really just add-ons to your current plan, you should just update your plan as appropriate. However, if you are planning a new initiative – something that moves you in a new direction that is not contemplated in your current plan – you should amend your plan and submit it to your Technology Plan Approver for review and approval.

Q. Do I need to include voice services in my technology plan?

A. It is a good idea to include all of the products and services you use to deliver educational or library services – even those that are not eligible for E-rate discounts – in your technology plan. Remember that your budget must reflect not only your ability to pay your share of the cost of discounted services, but the necessary resources not eligible for discounts (e.g., computers, software, electrical capacity, training) that you must have to make effective use of your discounted services.

For example, if you plan to offer a Homework Hotline, your telephone services are eligible for discounts but you will need voice telecommunications infrastructure (such as telephone handsets or possibly a PBX system) to provide this service. Your technology plan should reflect both the eligible and the ineligible products and services necessary for you to achieve your goals and strategies for delivering educational or library services.

updates from sld

If you've filed your Form 470 or 471 but haven't yet certified, there's good news! You have until March 12 to get that certification into SLD. It's recommended that you send in a paper copy so that you can get return receipt verification.

Internal connections for 2006 are currently being funded at 87% and above. They expect it to go somewhat lower but it's still not where most of our public libraries are. The lowest they got in 2005 was 80%.

If you feel like you just aren't getting enough information about E-Rate, you can subscribe to their news briefs.

key elements in tech plan?

Let me start with the disclaimer that this is guesswork on my part. We don't really know what SLD considers to be the key elements in technology plans. According to the SLD website, tech plans must meet the 5 requirements:

• The plan must establish clear goals and a realistic strategy for using telecommunications and information technology to improve education or library services;
• The plan must have a professional development strategy to ensure that staff know how to use these new technologies to improve education or library services;
• The plan must include an assessment of the telecommunication services, hardware, software, and other services that will be needed to improve education or library services;
• The plan must provide a sufficient budget to acquire and support the non-discounted elements of the plan: the hardware, software, professional development and other services that will be needed to implement the strategy; and
• The plan must include an evaluation process that enables the school or library to monitor progress toward the specified goals and make mid-course corrections in response to new developments and opportunities and they arise.

It says nothing about mission and vision so I don't know that you need to worry about whether or not these elements will be acceptable to SLD. Rather they're important as the basis for your goals and objectives. If you've gone through the Planning for Results process, they suggest making your mission statement a summary of your plan's goals. I think this would be a great topic to discuss at board and staff meetings.

But I doubt your plan would be rejected by SLD because your mission or vision was insufficient or unrealistic. From the plan they've rejected in Montana, I suspect SLD is more interested in whether or not you can make use of the money.

• Do you have the hardware and software required to effectively use the discounts? If you're asking for a T-1 line but only have one public access computer, they may think you don't.
• There should be evidence in the plan that staff receive training to use computers/internet and to train the public in their use.
• Adequate budget appears to be the big issue for them. There have been problems with waste, fraud and abuse. They apparently want to make sure that you have the resources available to meet your share of the costs - undiscounted portions, hardware/software upgrades, maintenance, training. So, if they want line items or proposed line items, give it to them by all means. We want to make it really obvious that you can and will make use of the funds provided in a responsible fashion.

To my mind, this all seems like overkill when looking at the relatively small amounts of E-Rate funds most Montana public libraries are receiving. ALA's E-Rate Task Force has been working tirelessly since the program began to try to interject some sanity and sense of scale, thus far to little avail. I have hope, but then I'm probably like the late Molly Ivins described herself, "always optimistic to the point of idiocy."

planning takes time

I've tried to make it very clear in previous blog postings and messages to wired-mt that technology planning for E-Rate is going to be a time intensive process from here on out. I know that some public library directors got the message because a number of them have opted for just basic phone service this year. Apparently, the little money they get in discounts for DSL lines does not warrant the time and effort that will be required to craft an SLD-approvable tech plan. And this is probably a very reasonable approach.

However, I don't think that technology planning is in any way a waste of time. I just wish we were working with library directors and boards taking on tech planning in order to implement long range plans rather than just to meet E-Rate requirements.

But it's a good thing to take some time to think about why you have technology in your library. What are you trying to accomplish for your community? And come up with some goals and objectives for your community. Do you want to provide access to the wide range of information on the internet? If so, what do you need to accomplish that? What skills do your staff need? How will you make sure they have those skills? What kind of equipment do you need? How much will it cost to maintain and update it? Do you have that in your budget? If not, how will you go about finding it?

One of the challenges of information technology as I see it is that it takes libraries to a new level. Some of our public libraries existed pretty much as reading rooms only a few years ago. People just stopped by when they needed something to entertain themselves. And that's not a bad role to play!

When computers and the internet arrived, so did the potential for these libraries to become world-class information centers. The problem was that I don't think they were all sure if this was really something they wanted to do. So, we ended up with libraries and computers and E-Rate stuck in a cycle of repeatedly jumping through hoops to support this stuff without any real idea of why we were doing it. What are we trying to accomplish?

As long as we're going to take tech planning seriously from now on, we might as well seriously address these issues. Apparently, technology in libraries isn't going away any time soon so I think it's high time we started thinking and talking about what we really want to do with it. Or even better, what can it do for us and our communities?

when do tech plans expire?

This is an interesting question and has been the topic of several discussions between myself, Michael Hall at OPI, and my colleagues at MSL.

Tech plans are approved for 3 years so it seems like you should have until the date it was approved to file a new one. Unfortunately, that's not how SLD sees it. When you certify your Form 470, you attest to the following:

"I certify that all of the individual schools, libraries and library consortia receiving services under this application are covered by technology plans that are written, that cover all 12 months of the funding year, and that have been or will be approved by a state or other authorized body, and that an SLD-certified technology plan approver, prior to the commencement of service...."

So, if your old tech plan expires August 2007, and you were expecting to have your new plan written and approved by then but hadn't yet done so, you can't very well certify that you have a tech plan that covers all 12 months of the 7/1/07-6/30/08 funding year. Your existing plan only covers 1 month of the funding year.

It's probably safest to consider that all tech plans regardless of when they were written or approved expire on June 30th of the 3rd year. The tech plans you're currently working on will cover 7/1/2007-6/30/2010. You'll need to write a new one probably by December 2009 (or whenever you file Form 470 for that year) and have it approved by spring 2010 (or whenever you file Form 486).

Technology Planning Approval Requirements

The Library Development Division at MSL has decided to advocate use of TechAtlas in preparing technology plans.

Many of you should already have TechAtlas accounts and should have at least some experience using the tool because we inventoried library public access computers with it about a year ago. It may look daunting because there is a lot you can do in TechAtlas. I'll specify here what you NEED to complete to have MSL approve your tech plan.

Envision (E-Rate requirement - The plan must establish clear goals and a realistic strategy for using telecommunications and information technology to improve education or library services)

• Describe your Mission
• Create your Vision
• Technology Planning Goals
• Objectives

If you're doing a tech plan strictly as an E-Rate requirement, keep your goals and objectives modest and attainable.

Survey (E-Rate requirement - The plan must have a professional development strategy to ensure that staff know how to use these new technologies to improve education or library services)

• Professional Development Strategy - you will probably need to complete one or more of the surveys or assessments to complete your professional development strategy, but we don't need to see them for your tech plan. But these could be really helpful in determining training needs so PLEASE feel free to share the results with your regional consultant: Suzanne, Maggie or Tracy.
• Another note - responses to some of the assessments generate objectives. Some of them are pretty lame - just suggesting that you take additional assessments. It's probably best to just go back and delete those.
  

Inventory (E-Rate requirement - The plan must include an assessment of the telecommunication services, hardware, software, and other services that will be needed to improve education or library services)

• Computers - This is the part of TechAtlas you're probably familiar with. This is useful information to have on hand particularly if you ever run into problems and need to contact support. For tech planning purposes, we will only require you to update your computer inventory. But I would also recommend that you complete as much as you can about your Internet and Telecomm services. Just the contact information will be invaluable if your service goes down.

Budget (E-Rate requirement - The plan must provide a sufficient budget to acquire and support the non-discounted elements of the plan: the hardware, software, professional development and other services that will be needed to implement the strategy)

This is the part of technology planning that makes me a little nervous because we've already had a MT public library turned down for E-Rate because they didn't include sufficient budget information. So, we'll give you two options:

• Setup/Worksheet - this ties your budget information to objectives or activities you cited earlier. If you've set a few modest objectives in the Envision part of the plan, now you'll need to specify plan years (2007-2009), budget categories and funding sources. Then you can download and create a spreadsheet where you fill in the expected costs for each objective for each year and link it to a budget category and source of funds.
• Budget Templates/Small Organization Technology Budget - I wouldn't expect a small library to have a budget like this for technology but I think this gives a good example of what you might want to look at for expected costs: hardware, software, network equipment, services, staffing, training. But we're looking at 3 years for this plan not 5. For hardware and software, you should probably look at replacing a computer about every 3 years. I know we tend to get longer lives from most of ours but look at the age of your computers and consider how much you'll have to spend in the next 3 years. Network equipment includes routers and modems - you'll probably have to replace or upgrade something. Services - certainly include at least your DSL lines and ISP costs. You can include E-Rate as a funding source. Staffing - include salaries for staff who work with technology probably as a percentage of their salary/time spent. Also include any money allocated to tech support. Training - even if you just plan to take advantage of training offered around the state, include some expected costs for staff time, travel, etc. Finally, make sure that your library budget supports this, if you're asked.

Evaluate (E-Rate requirement - The plan must include an evaluation process that enables the school or library to monitor progress toward the specified goals and make mid-course corrections in response to new developments and opportunities and they arise)

• Evaluation Steps - set up a few steps you'll take to evaluate your plan. These should be linked with your goals and objectives. How will you know if you're meeting your goals and objectives?
• Email Plan for Review - when you're ready to have me, Maggie or Tracy take a look at your plan, click on this link and it will email us a URL where we can go in and view what you've done up to that point.

Fear Not! If all of this seems impossibly difficult and cumbersome to you, we will schedule a number of web-based trainings to introduce you to TechAtlas and how to write a tech plan using it.

even people who read e-rate blogs need a laugh

I ran across a bizarre little tool called the Library Predict-o-matic 3000 that I just have to share. It comes up with gems like the following:

In 2007...

ExLibris will announce a new virtual version of Stephen Abram named Horizager.

Unfortunately, it will ultimately be banned in 36 US States.

or

In 2007...

Innovative will announce a new ILS product named Starillion.

Libraries will have the choice of two flavors: vanilla or tequila.

What can I say? Less than a week to the closing of the 471 window...