SFA Information for Financial Aid Professionals
U.S. Department of Education
| PublicationDate: 11/8/99 Summary: Student Financial Aid Year 2000 Project Status As of 5 November, 1999 Author: PSS - Program Systems Service Posted on November 08, 1999 As of 5 November, 1999 The Office of Student Financial Assistance (OSFA) is proud to announce that OSFA programs systems, which deliver and administer student assistance, are Year 2000 ready. However, this achievement alone does not assure the delivery of student aid. Trading exchange testing with our large population of OSFA customers will further reduce the risk of a Year 2000 failure in the delivery of student assistance. OSFA encourages each institution (school or agency), EDExpress or others to test their data exchange with the following systems during the windows of opportunity listed below. Testing plans and test cases can be found at http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocio/index.html. New! The Y2K school trading exchange testing with Ed may extend from the current scheduled date of November 19 to middle of December 1999. The planed dates for systems are: CPS: December 17, 1999 DLOS/LC: December 20, 1999 RFMS: December 17, 1999 NSLDS: No extension planned (ED will hand a request of testing on a case by case basis) Even though ED is planning to extend the testing date, ED strongly advises schools to finish their testing with ED by November 19, 1999. New! Institutions performing Y2K testing with DLOS: The Direct Loan Origination System Y2K School Testing test case has changed (updated on ED Web on Sept. 28, 1999) to reflect a new legislative change on the origination fee from 4% to 3% effective Aug. 15, 1999. Before conducting the test, DLOS schools are reminded to review the test cases at http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocio/index.html (The file is in the Year 2000 School and Trading Partner Test Plan under 2.4.1.4 Direct Loan Student Origination/Consolidation.)
Note the extension of testing into November. Please take advantage of this opportunity to mitigate Year 2000 risk in your data exchange with the Department. Our largest contingent of partners consists of the schools, and we have strongly urged that every school test its system with ours. Since many schools rely on third-party service providers for student aid servicing, we are soliciting those providers to test their data exchanges with each of our systems. Responses from the schools to our outreach program have included several requests that we encourage service providers to test with our systems, and to publicly acknowledge successes on our web site. As an incentive to schools, we have been posting, and will continue to post, successfully tested school names on the "School Testing Honor Roll" on the Department's Y2K web pages -- see http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocio/index.html. We are now instituting a separate page to list Servicers that successfully test with us. When any Servicer has successfully tested its data exchanges with the applicable ED systems, that Servicer will be acknowledged by the Department for having done so. This acknowledgement would indicate the Servicer's readiness to exchange data with us in a Y2K-compliant manner, and thus provide assurance to its clients and customers of Y2K preparedness. If your school employs a servicer for processing postsecondary student aid programs with the Department, you are strongly encouraged to ask your servicer to test with the Department. Upon successful testing with the Department, your school name will be posted on the Honor Roll on the Department website. In addition, your Servicer's name can be posted on the Servicer Honor Roll, once the Servicer notifies the Department of the school(s) used for their testing. Specific Reminders: Institutions performing Y2K testing with CPS: Institutions need to enter all 12 test FAFSAs without making significant data entry errors, and export with the system date set to 02/29/2000, in order to pass the test. Those schools who use EDExpress to participate in Year 2000 testing with the Department will get a message stating they need an access date password when they set their system clock back to the current date. This is because they are attempting to access the software with a system date earlier than last entered. They should call CPS Customer Service at 800-330-5947 to get the access date password. They should also tell the Customer Service Representative that the call is Y2K related so they are not charged for the call. General Reminder: The test results have shown that some of the testing challenges schools are experiencing are not always Year 2000 related. Common problems include: Invalid data: a non-Y2K problem due to data entry errors - an invalid test case which didnt make it to the compute stage, for example, such as in CPS school testing; Not following test procedures: not setting the system clock ahead or not using the ED-provided test data; Wrong data format: errors such as gaps in the data fields or data not properly formatted as required. Careful preparation of data for the test and use of the test cases as a checklist will aid in successful testing. Contact Persons for the School Testing: For general questions: Dan Callahan (202) 260 - 8644 For individual systems: NSLDS (National Student Loan Data System): Sandra Fowler (202) 260 -1115 DLOS (Direct Loan Origination System): Chuck Mahaney (202) 708 - 7365 CPS (Central Processing System): Frank Kidd (202) 260 - 0533 RFMS (Recipient and Financial Management System): Jana Henderson (202) 708 - 8698 Business Contingency Planning: The Office of Student Financial Assistance posted to the Departments web site (http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocio/index.html) its contingency plan that was submitted to OMB on June 15, 1999. This plan provides business continuity should there be a disruption related to the Year 2000 problem in any of the OSFA mission critical business processes. Please note that since this plan was completed, OMB issued very strict guidelines for approving any federal agencys plan that advances funds early. As a result of OMBs guidance, it is unlikely that we will be able to advance funds to schools in December 1999 from what would have been normal January 2000 disbursements. However, we are developing workarounds to our normal processes to assure funds will be available to schools. We encourage you to review and comment on this plan. We also encourage you to develop contingency plans for your critical business processes so that there will not be any disruptions at your institution. To ensure that the OSFA contingency plan will work in the unlikely event that there is a Y2K disruption, we have begun testing the plans. This testing will continue through the fall. In conclusion, OSFA wants to ensure that the student financial assistance community will not be disrupted on account of the Year 2000 problem. The SFA Year 2000 project team may be reached via email at: OPE_Y2K@ED.GOV. |