| PublicationDate: 3/13/96 Summary: 1996-97 FAFSA Processing - Announcement #8 Author: ODAS - Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary - SFA Announcement #8 - March 13, 1996 1996-97 FAFSA Processing Dear Financial Aid Administrator, I am writing to provide you with the eighth message in our continuing updates on 1996-97 FAFSA processing. All of us in the U.S. Department of Education recognize the hardships to students and schools resulting from the processing delays. We are also aware that some of you may believe the Department has not provided all the facts concerning the problems you are experiencing. The purpose of my communication is to explain in fuller detail the nature of our problem, the current status, our solutions, and what we have accomplished to date. We remain confident that we will meet the goals established in Secretary Riley's letter to the community last week. Processing of paper 1996-97 FAFSAs is delayed for two reasons. First, the two government shutdowns, coupled with a January blizzard, caused us to lose twenty-one critical working days. While our private contractors worked during this time, there were no government employees to assist in system start-up and testing. As a result, system sign-off took place on February 2, 1996 -- seventeen days later than last year. Second, our Multiple Data Entry (MDE) processors experienced technical difficulties with hardware and software. While such technical difficulties are not unusual, the frequency and timing of the problems has contributed to processing delays. As of yesterday, March 11, our contractors have received approximately 2.6 million paper FAFSAs and paper renewal FAFSAs from entering freshmen (40 percent) and continuing students (60 percent). We have processed over 560,000 individual student records, or 21 percent of the applications. Approximately one million applications, or 39 percent, are delayed beyond the normal fourteen day cycle and slightly more than one million applications, or 40 percent, were filed within the last fourteen days and are still within normal processing times. The 560,000 student records we processed have resulted in over one million Institutional Student Information Records (ISIRs)being created and sent, as many students list more than one school on their applications. In the future we will continue to report both the number of applications processed and the number of ISIRs sent. Processing the 1996-97 FAFSA is the Department's highest priority and we have developed a three-point strategy to address this problem. Our goals are to: eliminate all delays in processing and return to processing applications within normal processing time as soon as possible; increase use of electronic processing by remaining 1996-97 applicants; and implement a nationwide communications campaign to alert the public and provide prompt status updates. To date the accomplishments of the Department of Education and our private contractors include the following: * Stabilized image-based processing at MDEs * Developed and implemented coherent plan of action to meet production requirements - created additional processing capacity - added a third processing site using key entry only - hired more subcontractors - expanded to new work sites - set-up third shifts at existing sites - authorized overtime * Mailed 25,000 FAFSA Express disks to high schools and TRIO programs * Increased telephone capacity at the Federal Student Aid Information Center by 300 percent I would also like to clarify any misunderstanding concerning FAFSA Express. FAFSA Express is not the solution to our current problem. However, electronic processing -- which includes EDExpress and FAFSA Express -- will account for 40 percent of all FAFSAs we receive this year, or four million of the ten million. Electronic processing is faster for all parties, cheaper for the federal government, and results in fewer corrections because of the edit features. EDExpress was designed for schools, with optional student or financial aid administrator entry. On the other hand, FAFSA Express is designed for use by a family in their home or in a library or high school guidance counselor's office. At the time we recommended the use of FAFSA Express, we were unaware of one development associated with the processing of the signature page. As a result of the continuing resolution enacted by Congress in late January, we had to reprogram all the systems to compute the anticipated Pell Grant maximum of $2440 and the new expected family contributions. The programming for the compute feature of the Central Processing System was accomplished in four days. However, the reprogramming of the subsystems takes a month, resulting in a delay in starting the history corrections. Since the FAFSA Express signature page is processed as a correction, the delay in bringing up history corrections has caused a delay in FAFSA Express. As of March 11 we have less than 2,000 FAFSA Express records. We expect that history corrections will be running on March 15 and the FAFSA signature pages will be processed immediately after start-up. This will mean that FAFSA Express will have a 72 hour turn-around time. For this reason, we are still positive about the benefits of FAFSA Express if it is used for the purposes for which it was designed. We have also acted on other concerns raised concerning FAFSA processing. We take all these comments seriously, do the necessary research and trouble-shooting, and share our findings with you. For example, we added the approximately 40 missing schools to the FAFSA Express listing before mailing the 25,000 FAFSA Express disks to high schools. We just posted a BBS notice concerning some minor problems with SARs (see announcement #7). None of these problems affect the calculated EFC reported on the SARs. We have also received complaints about the amount of Direct Loans reported on SARs. This is a technical problem with the reporting of Direct Loans to NSLDS which creates a duplicate loan on NSLDS. The problem has been isolated and we are in the process of fixing it. We hope that you will continue to notify us if you discover issues of concern to you or your colleagues. Please call our Customer Support team at (800) 433-7327 to report these issues. Once a week, in addition to regular announcements, you will find a direct communication from me on the BBS. In the meantime, we thank you for your patience and understanding which have enabled us to make major strides in the past few weeks in solving this problem. Sincerely, Betsy Hicks Deputy Assistant Secretary for Student Financial Assistance Programs |