Federal Update Presenter: Rosemary Beavers National Association of Sigma Users July 24, 2003

Student Aid Programs  Direct Loan and Pell – FSA provides funds to students through schools, and schools report individual disbursements to FSA  Campus-Based – FSA provides funds to students through schools, and schools report aggregate disbursements to FSA  FFELP – private lenders provide funds to students through schools

FSA Products and Services  National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS)  Common Origination and Disbursement System (COD)  Federal Student Aid Handbook  Campus-Based Reporting System  Schools Portal  Financial Partners Portal

FSA Modernization Goals  Integrate & Simplify Systems and Processes  Enable our systems to seamlessly work together  Integrate our systems through reengineering, replacement, and retirement  Improve Service and Access to Federal Student Aid  Focus on the needs of customers  Be easy to do business with  Increase Program Integrity  Restore trust and integrity to Title IV student aid program  Eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse  Reduce Costs  Do more with less…serve more with less  Protect the public’s money

FSA Annual Operations Fiscal Year million aid applications 8 million aid recipients $56.5 billion delivered in total of new federal aid $32 billion delivered in consolidation loans 34 million inbound and outbound customer service phone calls 25 million Direct Loan borrower payments processed 20 billion hits to FSA web sites 41 million pieces of mail sent out to aid applicants during the most recent annual cycle

Distribution of Aid Fiscal Year 2002

Student Eligibility: FAFSA WE PROCESS OVER 600,000 APPLICATIONS IN A PEAK PROCESSING WEEK

Student Eligibility: FAFSA Electronic Process  Electronic process reject rate is less than 2%  Electronic process, including changes, can be usually completed in 72 hours Paper Process  Paper process reject rate is about 8%  The paper process, including changes, typically takes a minimum of 10 to 15 days  12 million submitted FAFSA forms  60% are completed electronically  Use of the online change process has increased nine fold over the last four years (3% to 26%)  8.3 million changes are made to previously submitted application by schools and applicants

COD Record Processing YTD – as of July 15, 2003 Originations (#)Originations ($) Actual Disbursements (#) Actual Disbursements ($) Direct Loan PLUS 232,929$1.6 billion421,227$1.5 billion Direct Loan Subsidized 1.8 million$5.8 billion3.1 million$5.4 billion Direct Loan Unsubsidized 1.3 million$4.6 billion2.2 million$4.2 billion Pell5.3 million$15.8 billion11.4 million$11.5 billion TOTAL 8.7 million$27.9 billion17.1 million$22.6 billion

COD Record Processing YTD – as of July 15, 2003 Originations (#) Originations ($) Actual Disbursements (#) Actual Disbursements ($) Direct Loan PLUS 41,293$403.9 million545$1.5 million Direct Loan Subsidized 395,975$1.6 billion30,151$56.5 million Direct Loan Unsubsidized 260,174$1.3 billion18,928$44.1 million Pell335,396$1.1 billion59,370$67.4 million TOTAL 1 million$4.3 billion108,994$169.5 million

Common Record – FSA, CommonLine, and PESC  Shared Goal of developing an XML Higher Education Standard.  Shared Lessons Learned (Technology and Implementation)  Working with Electronic Standards Council (ESC) as they develop the Common Record: CommonLine.  Provide Project Management assistance to PESC as they developed the Academic Transcript schema and the CommonRecord: CommonLine schema.

Common Record – Current State  Negotiations with Community  PESC Academic Transcript  ESC Common Record CommonLine  XML Framework

Common Record Estimated Implementation Schedule Common Record – COD v 1.0g Common Record –COD 2.0c (changed all tag names) Common Record –COD 2.0d (+2 new tags – 6 old tags) Common Record – ISIR 1.0a Align with standard Common Record – COD 3.0 Align with standard (XML Required) Common Record – ISIR 1.0a (XML Required) Common Record – COD 3.0a 07-08Common Record – ISIR 1.0a Common Record – COD 3.0b

COD Changes for  COD will accept Phase-In Participant records in  All schools must be Full Participants using the XML Common Record in  Reminder: EDExpress users are Full Participants beginning in

COD Changes for  COD will accept and process all Campus Based award and disbursement data from Full Participant schools for the and award years and forward  Campus Based award and disbursement data will be viewable on the COD web site

COD Message Class Changes for  Full Participants will have the option of using message classes that are specific by  Program  Award Year  Program and Award Year  General (e.g. COMRECIN, COMRECOP)  Receipts  The COD Technical Reference draft published in August will contain specific message class names

SAIG Transmission Header Changes for  SAIG has increased the variable field on the SAIG Transmission Header from 26 characters to 50 characters  The SAIG Transmission Header will be populated with the entire Document ID for Full Participants and the Batch ID for Phase-In Participants  If a school uses the variable space for other data on the incoming record, COD will not overwrite this data with the Document ID or the Batch ID

Pell Changes for : Record Layouts  The following data elements will not be required on the Common Record for the award year and subsequent years:  Academic Calendar Code  Payment Methodology Code  Weeks of instructional time used to calculate payment  Weeks of instructional time in program’s definition of award year  Credit/Clock hours used to calculate payment  Credit/Clock hours in this student’s program of study’s academic year  If a Full Participant school submits data in these tags, the COD system will not edit or store the data and will not return these tags on a Full Response  These tags will continue to be edited and stored for Phase-In Participants and will be returned in the Acknowledgement

Pell Changes for : Verification Initiatives  Two new informational tags will be added to the Response block:   will be returned in response for Pell actual disbursements if the student was selected for verification on any CPS transaction number and the school did not report ‘V’ or ‘S’

Pell Changes for : Verification Initiatives  will be returned in response for Pell actual disbursements if a CPS transaction number higher than the one reported by the school exists  A Verification Status Report will be sent to schools monthly indicating those students selected for verification by CPS that schools have not yet verified (QA schools excluded)

Direct Loan Changes for  Anticipated Disbursement information is required to establish all Direct Loan awards.  The sum of the disbursement information (anticipated and actuals) must be equal to the award amount  COD web site will be modified to allow more than one disbursement to be created when creating an award

Direct Loan Changes for  If a school submits a decrease to an award amount without adjusting the anticipated disbursements, and only anticipated disbursements exist on the award, COD will recalculate anticipated disbursements for the school  COD will begin recalculation with the highest disbursement number  If actual disbursements exist, new award amount can not be less than the sum of the actual disbursements (edit 41). Anticipated disbursements will not be recalculated

Direct Loan Changes for  The Direct Loan Program will not process pennies  The Common Record allows Full Participants to report pennies in the Award Amount tag  If a school submits pennies in the Direct Loan Award Amount, the COD system will truncate the cents to the right of the decimal

COD Timeline  2004 – 2005 Development Schedule:  Requirements CompleteJune 2003  Design CompleteAugust 2003  Development Complete November 2003  Testing CompleteFebruary 2004  School/Vendor TestingFebruary 2004  System Start UpMarch 2004