modernizing financial aid delivery a status report jim farmer instructional media + magic, inc. as...
TRANSCRIPT
Modernizing Financial Aid Delivery
A Status ReportJim Farmer
instructional media + magic, inc.
As presented at the
2001 Vermont Financial Aid Conference
Thursday, June 21st 2001
Killington, Vermont
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Financial aid services
• In the past, regulations drove practices, limited services
• Now, information technology drives practices; its implementation limits available services
________________
Using information technology, the U.S. Department of Education is improving its services, setting higher expectations
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Key initiatives
• Department of Education OSFA• Web enabled applications• Common Origination and Disbursements
• Student Loan Industry• Meteor Project• ELM Resources
• College and University Collaboratives• JA-SIG (Java in Administration Special
Interest Group)• Internet 2/Mace and Shibboleth
• Florida State University “30 minute application to funds”
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U.S. Department of Education
• OSFA Performance
• OSFA Plans
• An analysis
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SFA performance objectives
“Raise Our Customer Satisfaction Index From a Level Typical of Government to the Range Enjoyed by America’s Best Financial Service Companies.”
“Reduce Our Unit Cost — the Amount We Spend Administering Per Recipient — by One-fifth”
“[Raise] Our Employee Satisfaction Rating…From Mediocre to the Level of NASA Workers Who Reach for the Stars.”
Greg Woods, Interim Performance ObjectivesNov 15, 1999
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Web-enabled applications
FAFSA on the Web Schools Portal; Release 2.0 with
Single Sign-On Financial Partners Portals – FY 2002 Student On-line Access to Direct
Loan Servicing API to SFA Systems
Specifications due 09/30/01
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Web ApplicationFAFSA on the Web - 1999/2000Web ApplicationFAFSA on the Web - 2001
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FAFSA On The Web
FAFSA e-Filers
0.0
0.5
1.0
1.5
2.0
2.5
3.0
3.5
4.0
4.5
97-98 98-99 99-00 00-01
Mill
ions
of
stu
dents
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Benefits of Web applications
SFA
$23 million
Operating Costs Investment
Electronic FAFSA
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Customer satisfaction
1999 2000
Federal Government 68.6 68.6 0
Student Financial Assistance 63 70 +7
Patent & Trademark Office 57 59 +2
Internal Revenue Service 74 75 +1
(e-filers only)
Federal Emergency
Management Agency 73 73 0
U.S. Mint 86 84 -2
American Customer Satisfaction IndexUniversity of Michigan Business School
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Reducing unit costs
Annual Cost per Recipient
18.72 19.0818.06
22.30
$0
$5
$10
$15
$20
$25
1999 2000 2004SFA Goal
2004Projected
PlannedReduction
Each dollar reduction represents $14 million annual savings
SFA FY2001 Performance Plan
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CIO Score Card “Year One”
Rational Rose Tools
IBM MQ series - EAI/ Middleware
LDAP Compliance / BI Tools
RSA COTS tools
XML Compliance & Applications
Informatica - ETL tools
Digital Signatures
Published APIs
N-Tier Web Application
Coupled VDC Migration
Designed Data Warehouse
SLA’s in Place
Migrating to Seat Management
OPS Readiness Review
Designed Portal Apps
Internet/VPN
New Management Team
Training
IT Policy GuideManagement
Operations
Technologies
B+
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Electronic identification
Single Sign On for Students and Financial Aid Professionals
Remote Authentication of Students SFA Pin Via Proprietary Protocol
(transitional)
ACES Digital Certificates Via GSA
2002-2004 Plans Shared Authentication Using SFA PINs, ACES
Certificates, School PINs, Bank PINs and Certificates
Town Hall Meeting on Electronic IdentificationDecember 14, 2000
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Key OSFA “PBO” victory initiatives
• Turbo FAFSA
• Common Origination & Disbursement
• NSLDS Mad Dog Changes
• Schools Portal with Single Logon
• E-Sign & P-Note
• Consistent Answers for Customers (Contact Centers, CRM, Customer Data)
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Schools Portal Prototype
Friday, October 20
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Observations
Customers Using Electronic Services Are More Satisfied Than Those That Don’t.
Agencies That Measure Customer Satisfaction Have Better Customer Satisfaction That
the Federal Government As a Whole In General, Are Improving Customer
Satisfaction
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Expect...
• SFA Common Origination and Disbursements
• 2002-2003 Batch Processing Pilot - Difficult, limited volunteers, minimal vendor support, “successful”
• 2003-2005 Migration to COD
• 2005-2006 On-line, real-time“and earlier if requested” - Kay Jacks, COD
Software Developers Meeting
• Electronic Signatures
• Limited use of SFA PIN
• Replaced by Internet 2/SAML December 2002
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Expect...
• Alternative loans will be the largest source of financial aid by 2005
• The focal point of financial aid information and transactions will be the college or university
• “Web services” to be the basis for the new information technology infrastructure
• New college and university administrative systems based on Web services, component architecture will become available 2003, widely implemented in 2004 and 2005
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Impact on colleges and universities
Change From Batch to Real-time Transactions, From Proprietary File Transfers to Internet XML
Messaging Standards From SFA-defined to Industry Message Content
Standards
Integrate Student Experience With SFA Student-oriented Systems
Use SFA-provided Java J2EE shared-components
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NCHELP-sponsored “convergence”
• Business messages
OSFA Common Record, IFX Forum, CommonLine, PESC, industry XML
• Data transport
OSFA, CommonLine, PESC, industry SOAP and ebXML
• Authentication (in progress)
OSFA Internet 2/Shibboleth, JA-SIG, industry SAML
• Directory Services (soon)
• OSFA, Meteor, industry UDDI
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The Meteor Project
• An initiative of the student loan industry
• Collaborative effort of 31 guaranty agencies, lenders, secondary markets, and servicers
• On-line, real-time information services
• Separate channels for students and financial aid professionals
• Aligned with industry, SFA standards
______________________
“Building the IT infrastructure for the next decade”
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Florida State University
On-line in “30 minutes”
• Apply for admission and be accepted
• Apply for financial aid, including the FAFSA, receive an award, issue credits and initiate funds transfer
• Apply for housing and receive a housing assignment
• Enroll in classes
__________________
FSU reports general agreement with OSFA for their design
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Students expectations shaped by...
• Their experience applyingfor federal financial aid
• Their use of financial services portals
• Their use of the Internet
• Their life in a “real-time, information rich” environment
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Students now expect...
• Customer service 24 hours a day,7 days a week
• Complete information froma single source
• Delivery by Web, e-mail, telephone, and facsimile, and, wireless devices
• response time of 15 seconds for telephone, 10 seconds for Web, and 2 hours for e-mail and facsimile
• access to a complete customer history
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College students choose a Web site...
Ranked by importance
• College or university’s portalif adequate
• Suggestions of other students
• Print advertisements
• Web search
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Is technology important?
• Technology determines the quality of e-services you offer to Web-savvy prospective students, students, alumni, and public.
• Technology determines with whom you do e-business how it is done.
___________________
From the institutional perspective, financial aid is not a priority
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SFA technology choices
Announced February 2000
XML - B2B Standard Business Messages
XML Schema
Java - Transportable Programs Shared Java Components
Web Implementations – FAFSA
UML - Unified Modeling Language
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SFA technology under study
SOAP for Internet Data Transport Commercial/Open Source Software
available, supported Recommended by NCHELP’s Electronic
Standards Committee “Commonline” Implemented by the National Student
Clearinghouse, Meteor
UDDI – Universal Discovery, Description, and Integration Directory services, possibly PEPS
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Web services architecture is
• XML “tagged” data contenteXtensible Markup Language
• SOAP data transportSimple Object Access Protocol
• XSL transformations for presentationeXtensible stylesheet language
and now
• UDDI/WSDL directory servicesUniversal Description, Discovery, and Integration, and Web Services Description Language
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Technology standards
M - from Meteor installationO - optional
Industry
OS
FA
Met
eor
J A-S
IGuPort
al
IBM
Web S
erv
ices
Mic
roso
ft.N
et
Sun O
ne
J ava Programming Language O XML Markup Language SOAP Data Transport M UDDI Directory M WSDL Service Description M
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Support of Web services
• Feb 2000 - OSFA U.S. Department of Education
• Sep 2000 - NCHELP CommonLine Electronic Standards Committee
• Oct 2000 - NCHELP’s Meteor Project
• Dec 2000 - IBM Corporation
• Feb 2001 - Sun Microsystems
• Mar 2001 - Microsoft Corporation
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A technology strategy
• Align student financial aid requirements with institutional information technology standards and practices
• Align technology choices with industry, SFA standards
• Monitor collaborative efforts
• Consider outsourcing financial aid services
• Specific functions
• With local integration
The end
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