Privacy policy

Who we are

ProCadence is E-Rate software for schools, libraries and consortia, provided by BlackTree LLC (11000 W McNichols Rd, Suite 323-1252, Detroit, MI 48221). This policy covers the ProCadence websites: the public pages, the client portal, the vendor bid portal and the emails they send.

What we collect

• Account details: the name, title, work email and time zone of each person with a login, and of the colleagues an organization adds to its team.
• The organization's E-Rate record: what USAC publishes about it (funding requests, decisions, budgets, entities), and what the organization adds: answers to setup questions, sites and their counts, contacts, contracts, documents it uploads, and the forms and records prepared with it.
• Discount data as totals only: student and lunch-eligible counts per school. We never ask for student or family names, and the system is designed not to receive student education records.
• Signature records: when someone signs in the portal, the typed name and title, the time, the IP address and the browser, kept with the signed document.
• Quote requests and vendor bids: the details people enter in those forms, with the time and IP address of the submission.
• Email records: which system emails were sent to whom, and whether delivery succeeded.

We never ask for or store passwords to USAC's E-Rate Productivity Center (EPC) or any other outside system. Organizations add their consultant in EPC themselves.

If we contacted you first

Outreach about E-Rate uses work contact details that schools and libraries publish in USAC's public records and in state school and library directories. Every outreach email says how to stop further messages; a request to stop is honored permanently. You can also write to info@procadence.net.

How we use it

• To run the organization's E-Rate year: dates and reminders, bidding, filing preparation, review answers, records and invoices.
• To send the emails the service needs: confirmations, reminders and follow-ups, notices and summaries. Team members choose which kinds of news they receive on the Team page.
• To keep the service secure and working: sign-in, preventing abuse, and fixing problems.
• To sort replies to our emails: software, including an AI model that runs on our own computer (no outside AI service receives them), suggests what a reply is about, and a person reviews the suggestion before anything is recorded. Replies are received in our Google Workspace mailbox.

We don't sell personal information, use it for advertising, or share it with service providers that bid on E-Rate work. A vendor's bid is shared with the organization that requested bids, because it is part of that organization's procurement record.

Who else handles it

These companies process data for us to run the service, under their own security and privacy terms:

• Hetzner Online: the servers, in Ashburn, Virginia.
• Cloudflare: storage for backups, which are encrypted before they leave our servers.
• WorkOS: sign-in.
• Google Workspace: sending email.
• Healthchecks.io: checks that scheduled jobs ran; it receives no personal information.

We share information with USAC, the FCC or auditors only when the organization's E-Rate work requires it, and otherwise only when the law requires it.

Cookies

The portal uses a session cookie to keep you signed in and to protect its forms, and WorkOS sets the cookies sign-in needs. There are no analytics, advertising or tracking cookies, and the pages load no scripts from other companies.

How long we keep it

E-Rate requires applicants to keep their program records for at least 10 years after the last date to receive service, so a client's E-Rate records are kept at least that long and are never deleted automatically. When an engagement ends, the organization receives copies of its records.

If an organization doesn't become a client, anyone with access to its account can ask for the account and its records to be deleted by writing to info@procadence.net. We delete them within 30 days, except anything the law requires us to keep.

How we protect it

Connections are encrypted (HTTPS). Each organization's records are kept separate: its own team sees only its records, and only our staff see records across organizations. Every change to a client's records is logged with who made it and when. Signed documents can't be altered, and backups are encrypted and stored separately from the servers. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects your information, we will tell you as the law requires.

Your choices

• See and correct your organization's details in the portal at any time.
• Choose which emails you receive on the Team page, or ask us to stop any email.
• Ask for a copy of your organization's records, or ask a question about this policy, at info@procadence.net.

Schools and libraries that are public bodies may be subject to public records laws; nothing here limits them.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the new version is posted here with its date. If a change is significant, we tell account holders by email before it takes effect.