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(Application Processing) Subject: 2013-2014 EDE Technical Reference (December 2012 Update)

Posted Date:December 17, 2012

Author: William Leith, Service Director, Program Management, Federal Student Aid

Subject: 2013-2014 EDE Technical Reference (December 2012 Update)

We are pleased to announce the posting of the updated 2013-2014 Electronic Data Exchange (EDE) Technical Reference. The EDE Technical Reference provides programmer specifications, record layouts, and other detailed information for schools or other organizations that need to design software systems to interface with the U.S. Department of Education's application processing system.

The December 2012 update corrects several field position issues in the Field Name and Position Cross-References table in the Processing Codes section. These issues were originally discovered by a third-party software vendor and reported on the FSATECH listserv. See the "Background" and "Resolution" sections of this message for more detailed information on the December 2012 updates.

In addition to its current availability on the Information for Financial Aid Professionals (IFAP) Web site, the updated technical reference will also be available in the next several days from the Federal Student Aid Download (FSAdownload) Web site, located at https://www.fsadownload.ed.gov.

Background

The logic for assigning the positions for the FAFSA Data Verify Flags, Correction Flags, and Highlight Flags has not changed between the 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 award years. However, when developing the 2013-2014 EDE Technical Reference, we incorrectly incremented the flag positions for several fields. This requires revisions to the Field Name and Position Cross-References table in the Processing Codes section. While researching this issue, we also determined that a field in the 2012-2013 EDE Technical Reference incorrectly listed field positions.

Resolution

2012-2013
In the 2012-2013 EDE Technical Reference's Processing Codes section, we determined that the field positions for the Student Last Name/SSN Change Flag should be labeled as "No Flag" for the FAFSA Data Verify Flag, Correction Flag, and Highlight Flag. The Student Last Name/SSN Change Flag is a CPS-generated flag that is assigned based on the values in the Student's Last Name field and the SSN field. You should review these individual fields to determine if the fields have been verified, corrected, or will have a highlight.

No update to the 2012-2013 EDE Technical Reference is planned for this issue. We will, however, correct this issue in the 2013-2014 EDE Technical Reference, as described in the "2013-2014" section below.

2013-2014
We are implementing three corrections to the Field Name and Position Cross-References table in the Processing Codes section of the 2013-2014 EDE Technical Reference:

  • The table will be updated to reflect correct field positions for the FAFSA Data Verify Flag, Correction Flag, and Highlight Flag position columns. The single-digit increase of the position numbers for these flags will ripple subsequently through the remainder of the section in which they are listed.

  • The Professional Judgment field was inadvertently omitted from the table and will be added. The positions for the FAFSA Data Verify Flag, Correction Flag, and Highlight Flag will be 2541, 2121, and 2331 respectively.

  • Lastly, we will label the Student Last Name/SSN Change Flag as "No Flag" for the FAFSA Data Verify Flag, Correction Flag, and Highlight Flag in the table. For more information on the need for this change, see the "2012-2013" section above.

Contact Information

If you have questions, contact CPS/SAIG Technical Support at 80 have questions, contact CPS/SAIG Technical Support at 80="mailto:CPSSAIG@ed.gov">CPSSAIG@ed.gov.