Notice of required electronic processes and related system requirements.

Page Numbers: 55418-55420

Notice of required electronic processes and related system requirements.

Posted on 09-14-2004

Student Assistance General Provisions, Federal Perkins Loan, 
Federal Work-Study, Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant, 
Federal Family Education Loan, William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan, 
Federal Pell Grant, and Leveraging Educational Assistance Partnership 
Programs

AGENCY: Department of Education.

ACTION: Notice of required electronic processes and related system
requirements.

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SUMMARY: We give notice that, beginning with the 2005-2006 award year,
institutions participating in the Federal student aid programs must
ensure they participate in the designated electronic processes included
in this notice and satisfy the hardware and software specifications
described in this notice. The Federal student aid programs are
authorized under Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965, as
amended (Title IV, HEA Programs).

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The Student Assistance General Provisions
regulations in 34 CFR 668.16(o) provide, in part, that to be
administratively capable an institution must participate in electronic
processes designated by the Secretary. These processes were first
identified in a notice published in the Federal Register on September
19, 1997 (62 FR 49414). In that notice, we also provided information
regarding the hardware and software requirements needed for an
institution to participate in the designated electronic processes.
Because of advances in technology, we updated those hardware and
software requirements in a Federal Register notice published on
December 22, 2000 (65 FR 80841).

In this notice, we update both the designated electronic processes
that an institution must participate in and the software and hardware
requirements (presented as a minimum system configuration and an
optimal system configuration) that an institution must have to
participate in these processes. Most of the electronic processes
included in this notice are the same processes that were included in
the previous Federal Register notices, although the specific technology
and/or names of those processes may have changed (for example, the
Student Aid Information Gateway (SAIG) has replaced the Title IV Wide
Area Network (TIV WAN)).

A new process included in this notice is that all institutions must
send and receive origination and disbursement data for the Federal Pell
Grant Program and the Federal Direct Loan Program to our Common
Origination and Disbursement (COD) system using the Extensible Markup
Language (XML) ``Common Record: COD.'' Beginning with the 2005-2006
award year, this requirement will apply to all institutions, including
COD phase-in participants that currently submit and receive information
using flat-file record formats. Additional information on this
requirement is provided in item 11 under Designated Electronic
Processes below.

Designated Electronic Processes

To be in compliance with 34 CFR 668.16(o), an institution must:
1. Participate in the Student Aid Internet Gateway (SAIG);
2. Use our electronic process whenever it is required to submit or
update its Application for Approval to Participate in the Federal
Student Aid Programs (for example, when the institution initially
applies to participate, when it is recertified, or when it reports
required changes, or seeks to be reinstated);
3. Use our electronic processes to submit its Fiscal Operations
Report and Application to Participate (FISAP) and other required
reports or requests for the campus-based programs (Federal Perkins
Loan, Federal Work-Study, Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity
Grant);
4. Electronically receive Institutional Student Information Records
(ISIRs) from our Central Processing System (CPS) using the Student Aid
Information Gateway (SAIG);
5. Use the Student Aid Information Gateway (SAIG) and approved
electronic processes when submitting a Free Application for Federal
Student Aid (FAFSA) on behalf of an applicant for Federal student aid
to our Central Processing System (CPS) or when submitting corrections
or updates to FAFSA data to CPS for an applicant;
6. If not already listed, add itself to the Central Processing
System (CPS) record for a student it wishes to consider for Title IV
assistance;
7. Have on-line Internet access to the National Student Loan Data
System (NSLDS) and submit to NSLDS its Federal Perkins Loan data, its
student enrollment records, its Title IV program overpayments, and its
NSLDS Transfer Monitoring records using either the offered Student
Aid Information Gateway (SAIG) services or the
Internet, as appropriate;
8. Access the ``Information for Financial Aid Professionals''
(IFAP) Web site;
9. Electronically submit its annual compliance and financial
statement audits, and any other required audits;
10. Receive its draft and official cohort default rate data
electronically; and
11. Beginning with the 2005-2006 award year, send and receive
origination and disbursement data for the Federal Pell Grant Program
and the Federal Direct Loan Program to the COD system using the Student
Aid Information Gateway (SAIG) and the Extensible Markup Language (XML)
``Common Record: COD'' that complies with the published schema for each
award year.

Technical Specifications

For an institution to effectively and efficiently participate in
the designated electronic processes listed above, it must obtain
appropriate software and hardware. While many institutions currently
participate in these electronic processes, at least partially, using
mainframe technology, many other institutions, and to some extent many
of the mainframe schools, use a desktop computing environment for all
or part of their Title IV student aid processing. Specifically, many
institutions use our EDCONNECT process for receiving and sending data
over the SAIG. Also, many institutions use one or more of the processes
included in our EDExpress suite of products. Accordingly, we are
providing the following minimum and optimal hardware and software
configurations as part of this electronic processes notice.
Although all of the required electronic processes included in this
notice can be performed using the minimum configuration, we strongly
recommend the optimal configuration, particularly in cases where an
institution sends or receives 4,000 or more records in an XML document
(batch). This is because the new XML file formats used by EDExpress and
COD (and in the future by CPS) are larger and require greater storage
and computing power. For the same reason, while we include ``high speed
Internet connection'' only in the Optimal Configuration, we encourage
institutions to consider moving away from a ``dial-up'' connection if
they intend on submitting or receiving large amounts of data. This will
significantly reduce transmission time and will increase the
probability of an uninterrupted transmission session.

System Configurations
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FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: For general questions relating to
these requirements, contact John Kolotos, U.S. Department of Education,
400 Maryland Avenue, SW., (UCP room 113F1), Washington, DC 20202.
Telephone: (202) 377-4027, FAX: (202) 275-4552, or by e-mail:
john.kolotos@ed.gov.
For questions related to the Student Aid Information Gateway (SAIG)
and to the Central Processing System (CPS), contact CPS/SAIG Technical
Support at 1-800-330-5947.
For questions related to the Application To Participate, the
Information for Financial Aid Professionals (IFAP) Web site, and the
electronic submission of audits, contact the Customer Service Call
Center for Schools at 1-800-433-7327.
For questions related to the campus-based programs, contact the
Campus-Based Call Center at 1-877-801-7168.
For questions related to the National Student Loan Data System
(NSLDS), contact NSLDS Customer Service at 1-800-999-8219.
For questions related to the Common Origination and Disbursement
(COD) system, contact the COD School Relations Center at 1-800-848-0978
for the Federal Direct Loan Program or 1-800-474-7268 (1-800-4PGRANT)
for the Federal Pell Grant Program.
If you use a telecommunications device for the deaf (TDD), you may
call the Federal Information Relay Service at 1-800-877-8339.
Individuals with disabilities may obtain this document in an
alternative format (e.g., Braille, large print, audiotape, or computer
diskette) on request to John Kolotos using the contact information
listed above.

Electronic Access to This Document

You may view this document, as well as all other documents of this
Department published in the Federal Register, in text or Adobe Portable
Document Format (PDF) on the Internet at the following site: http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leavingFR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.ed.gov/news/fedregister.

To use PDF you must have Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is available
free at this site. If you have questions about using PDF, call the U.S.
Government Printing Office (GPO), toll free, at 1-888-293-6498; or in
the Washington, DC area at (202) 512-1530.

Note: The official version of this document is the document
published in the Federal Register. Free Internet access to the
official edition of the Federal Register and the Code of Federal
Regulations is available on GPO Access at: http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leavingFR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.gpoaccess.gov/nara/index.html.

Program Authority: 20 U.S.C. 1070a, 1070b-1070b-4, 1070c-1070c-
4, 1071-1087-2, 1087a-1087j, 1087aa-1087ii, 1094, and 1099c; 42
U.S.C. 2751-2756b.

(Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance numbers: 84.007 Federal
Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant (FSEOG) Program; 84.032
Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) Programs; 84.033 Federal Work-
Study (FWS) Program; 84.038 Federal

[[Page 55420]]

Perkins (Perkins) Loans; 84.063) Federal Pell Grant (Pell) Program;
84.069 Leveraging Educational Assistance Partnership (LEAP)
Programs; and 84.268 William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan (Direct
Loan) Programs)

Dated: September 8, 2004.
Theresa S. Shaw,
Chief Operating Officer, Federal Student Aid.
[FR Doc. E4-2185 Filed 9-13-04; 8:45 am]