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Summary: Impact on COD Processing February 17-21, 2006

Publication Date: February 7, 2006

Author: G. Kay Jacks, General Manager, FSA Application, School Eligibility and Delivery Services

Summary: Impact on COD Processing February 17-21, 2006

Posted on 02-07-2006

We are planning to execute two major Common Origination and Disbursement (COD) System upgrade and maintenance activities during the period February 17-21, 2006. These activities will result in outages of certain COD System functionality for varying periods of time. We appreciate your patience and understanding as we complete these important activities. In addition, funding requests will not be processed on February 20, 2006, the Washington's Birthday Federal holiday.

Below we explain how each activity and the holiday impact COD System availability and processing. Please review this information to determine if processing at your school will be affected.


Upgrade to Report Section of COD Web Site

During the period February 17-21, 2006, we will complete an upgrade of the hardware and software that comprises the report section of the COD Web site. The upgrade will result in more efficient and expedient processing and posting of reports to the Web site.


For Pell Grant and Direct Loan Participants-

  • The report section of the COD Web site will be unavailable from 6:00 P.M. (ET) on Friday, February 17th until 8:00 A.M. (ET) on Tuesday, February 21st. During this period, users will not be able to retrieve reports via the Services tab on the COD Web site.

Included in the upgrade to the report section of the COD Web site is an enhancement that will result in the same treatment of reports that contain no data sent via the Student Aid Internet Gateway (SAIG) and available on the COD Web site. Currently, we do not send reports that contain no data to schools via the SAIG. However, currently, we do generate and post these reports on the COD Web site. A user does not learn that a report contains no data until he or she retrieves the report from the COD Web site, opens it, and reads the message "No Data Available." We want to eliminate this unnecessary burden for schools.

After we implement the enhancement, only reports that contain data will be sent via the SAIG and will be available on the COD Web site. If there is no data available to populate a report, it will not be sent to the school's SAIG mailbox and will not be posted to the COD Web site. For example, if there is no data available to populate an SSN, Name, Date of Birth Change report for a school, a report will not be sent to the school's SAIG mailbox and will not be posted to the COD Web site.

COD System Maintenance

On Sunday, February 19, 2006, we will perform system maintenance on the COD System.

For Pell Grant and Direct Loan Participants-

  • The COD Web site will unavailable for users to submit or retrieve data from 12:30 A.M. until 12:30 P.M. (ET) on February 19th. Additionally, batches submitted by schools will be held and not processed until after the COD System comes back up.

For Direct Loan Program Participants-

  • The Direct Loan Electronic Master Promissory Note (MPN) Web site will be unavailable for an extended period of time from 12:30 A.M. until 12:30 P.M. (ET) on February 19th. Borrowers will not be able to complete or retrieve MPNs during this extended period.
  • As a reminder, the Direct Loan Electronic MPN Web site is unavailable every Sunday morning from 5:00 A.M. until 11:00 A.M. (ET) while routine maintenance is performed. During this period, borrowers are not able to complete new MPNs electronically or retrieve existing MPNs that were completed electronically.

Washington's Birthday Federal Holiday

Monday, February 20, 2006 is the Washington's Birthday Federal holiday.

For Pell Grant and Direct Loan Participants-

  • The COD School Relations Center will be open from 8:00 A.M. until 8:00 P.M. (ET) on February 20th.
  • The COD System will accept and process data from schools and send back responses/acknowledgements on February 20th. However, requests for changes in funding levels and for funds will not be processed until Tuesday, February 21st.

Additional information regarding processing and customer service hours for other Federal Student Aid/Department call centers on the holiday will be posted on the IFAP Web site (http://www.ifap.ed.gov).

Contact Information
If you have any questions about this announcement, contact the COD School Relations Center at 800/4PGRANT for Pell Grant or 800/848-0978 for Direct Loan. You may also e-mail CODSupport@acs-inc.com.