SLD has experience from the first three funding years with the reduction in demand associated with the data entry process for paper applications, but there is no certainty that prior experience will be applicable to Year 4. SLD has entity-specific information only for applications that have been data entered. Thus, SLD can examine the extent to which specific Year 4 Internal Connections requests are associated with entities that were associated with Year 3 commitments for Internal Connections. In estimating the outcome for the proposed alternative, SLD must extrapolate from data-entered applications to those still in the data entry process. Approvable requests differ from original requests.
Available funds are committed to approvable requests.
SLD's PIA team reviews all funding requests and determines whether they comply with FCC rules. If they do not, they are reduced or denied. The result of the process is approvable requests. While SLD has three years of experience with the transformation of original requests to approvable requests, there is no certainty that prior experience will be applicable to Year 4. For example, applicants may have learned from prior years and their requests may better conform with FCC rules so that there would be fewer reductions and denials.