ASDOE requests a “waiver to restore” more than $600,000 for its WAN project

Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — The American Samoa State Education Agency (SEA), which is the ASG Education Department (ASDOE), has requested a federal agency for a “waiver to restore” more than $600,000 originally committed to American Samoa for fiscal year 2017.

The Nov. 10th “Letter of Waiver Request” came from ASDOE’s official Lydia Amisone to the US Federal Communications Commission, which provided funding through its Universal Service Administrative Co. (USAC)  division for the “Wide Area Network (WAN) Data Services for the Department of Education” project in the territory.

The project went out for bid in early 2015 and the Procurement Office received only one-bid in March 2015, from the American Samoa TeleCommunications Authority (ASTCA), which was the WAN contractor at the time, according to documents Amisone submitted to FCC.

In an Apr. 14, 2015 letter from Source Evaluation Board (SEB) — appointed to review bids and decide on the project — the acting chief procurement officer at the time, Sapia’i Ma’o Ena, was informed of the board’s scoring of ASTCA’s bid — 78 points out of 100 — and recommended the project to be awarded to ASTCA.

The letter, which Amisone also submitted to FCC, shows that Ma’o Ena — gave her approval of the SEB recommendation, the following day, Apr. 15, 2015.

On background information, Amisone recalled in her Nov. 10th letter, that it was determined by FCC/USAC, that “American Samoa SEA failed to consider all bids submitted as American Samoa SEA did not provide documentation to support the evaluation of bids received.”

Furthermore, since American Samoa SEA failed to consider all bids received and choose the most cost-effective solution, American Samoa violated the competitive bidding process.

In response, Amisone submitted to FCC a copy of the SEB recommendation letter to Ma’o Ena, that indicated there was only one bid proposal received and it was from ASTCA.

“American Samoa SEA was unable to supply documentation on time requested by USAC as the Procurement Office was relocated as their building was destroyed by Hurricane Gita in 2018,” Amisone wrote.

Following the FCC’s Order for Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, “America Samoa requests waiver of documentation retention regulations in light of the devastation cause by Gita,” she wrote.

She cited provisions of the FCC Order for Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria — in the US: “We waive section 54.516 [a] of our rules concerning such destroyed records, which requires schools, libraries, consortia, and service providers to retain all documents related to their application for at least 10 years after the latter of the last day of the applicable funding year or the service delivery deadline of the funding request. Applicants and service providers will not be penalized for failure to retain records destroyed by the Hurricanes.”

American Samoa SEA requests a “waiver to restore $664,200” that was originally committed to American Samoa for FY 2017, she said and also included in her submission is the Presidential Declaration for Gita issued for American Samoa.

FCC made public yesterday Amisone’s letter and supporting documents.