Congress Reports on eRate Abuse

A new Congressional report on eRate oversight reaffirms what eRate watchers already know: that the program, while valuable to schools, "is extremely vulnerable to waste, fraud, and abuse, is poorly managed by the FCC, and completely lacks tangible measures of either effectiveness or impact." The conclusions reached by Congress are nearly identical to those asserted by the General Accountability Office (GAO) in a separate report issued in March. As part of that report, the GAO, which is responsible for monitoring how the government spends taxpayer dollars, criticized the FCC for taking a largely hands-off approach to the eRate and said that its lack of oversight makes it nearly impossible to determine "the scope of any waste, fraud, and abuse within the program." The GAO report went on to make several recommendations for the FCC to consider as it overhauls the program, including promoting a clearer understanding of federal requirements, outlining a set of performance measures to assess the program's effectiveness in schools, and taking steps to reduce the massive backlog of funding requests currently clogging the appeals system. Congress, with the release of findings from its own investigation, provides further momentum for such reforms. But change isn't likely to happen overnight. "The FCC has been working on these issues for a long time," said Peter Kaplan, director of regulatory affairs for Funds for Learning, a national eRate consulting firm. "The agency will continue to streamline and reform these issues as best it can." If the FCC doesn't show progress soon, he said, Congress could force the agency's hand. Either way, one thing is clear: the eRate isn't going anywhere. Despite the criticisms, "no one is talking about killing or abolishing the eRate," explained Kaplan. Instead, he said, the focus is on "much-needed reform."
[SOURCE: eSchool News]
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStory.cfm?ArticleID=5919