| PublicationDate: 3/20/96 Summary: 1996-97 FAFSA Processing - Announcement #14 Author: ODAS - Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary - SFA Announcement #14 - March 20, 1996 1996-97 FAFSA Processing Dear Financial Aid Administrator, This is the fourteenth message in our continuing updates on 1996-97 FAFSA processing. Since I last wrote to you, we have made significant progress, and we are confident that we will meet our processing goals of March 31 for all applications filed through the end of February, and April 15 for all applications filed through the end of March. As of March 20, we have processed more than 1.1 million records, which have resulted in more than 3 million ISIRs. Our recovery plan is based on stabilizing the optical imaging processing as well as developing an alternate process. This secondary process provides a necessary back-up to the primary process and also allows us to make more progress in resolving the delayed applications. I am pleased to report that last week we doubled the output from the optical imaging process and successfully implemented a key-data/key-verify process at two additional major sites. Our rapid expansion of this secondary process will lead to incremental increases in production each week until our processing goals are met. We now have a number of additional processing sites that are dedicated to processing FAFSAs. Many of these sites have been added since we began processing in early February. In order to efficiently apply the resources of these additional sites and add their production capability to that which existed, we have had to move records from one site to another. When deciding which records to move, we considered a variety of factors: date of receipt, status of processing, production capacity of each site, geographical distance between sites, and cost. By redistributing these records, we have assured that all applications will be processed in the shortest time possible. However, we will not be able to adhere strictly to our first-in, first-out processing approach. As of this date all January records received at ACT have been processed; INET has about 30,000 records remaining from January that will be processed this week. February and March records are dispersed among the three main processors, ACT, INET and NCS, and are in the following stages of production. o ACT has completed all its applications through the first half of February. It will work on its remaining February records and then its March records in chronological order by date of receipt. ACT is also processing all correction records received by ACT and INET. The history correction process went into production March 15 and FAFSA Express signature pages were processed first. o INET will complete its processing of the 30,000 records remaining from January this week and has begun processing records received during the first week of February. INET next will process applications that it received the second week of February, followed by those records received the fourth week. Then, INET will process records it receives in the third and fourth weeks of March. o NCS is processing records that originally were received by INET. These include records that INET received during the third week of February as well as during the first two weeks of March. These were the best records to transport to NCS as they had not yet entered one of the production stages. This means that some records will be processed out of strict order. However, this approach creates the least disruption to the current process and provides the best assurance that all records will be processed by the deadlines of March 31 and April 15. I also want to inform you that later this week we will make some enhancements to our status reports. To date we have informed you of the number of aggregate records and ISIRs processed by the CPS. These numbers are not easily matched with dates of receipt. For this reason, we also want to share additional numbers with you. On Friday of this week, we will provide you with the number of records transmitted by the MDEs to the CPS. These numbers provide you a better indication of the aging of the delayed applications as well as an earlier indication of the CPS output. We hope that this more comprehensive reporting of the status of our private contractors' progress will assist you in managing your workload and developing school-based strategies. If you have any other suggestions on how our reporting can assist you, please do not hesitate to contact our Customer Support team at (800) 433-7327. In closing, all of us in the U.S. Department of Education recognize the hardships to students and schools resulting from the processing delays. We thank you for your continued patience and understanding and remain open to any suggestions you have on how we can better assist students and schools during this critical time. Respectfully submitted, Elizabeth M. Hicks Deputy Assistant Secretary for Student Financial Assistance Programs |