Major programs within the Education Department
Student Aid on the Web: The Federal Student Aid Web site, at
www.studentaid.ed.gov, offers students and their families a single source of information on choosing a career, selecting a school and identifying resources to pay for education beyond high school.
FAFSA on the Web: The site, at
www.fafsa.ed.gov, lets students apply for aid online using an electronic version of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. Almost 80 percent of the 13 million applications submitted annually are now online, which decreases processing time and printing costs, and increases accuracy and accessibility.
Common Services for Borrowers: An FSA initiative aimed at improving customer service to students, this program is expected to achieve about $1 billion in cost savings. CSB will re-engineer four business processes'the Direct Loan Servicing System, Debt Management and Collection System, Direct Loan Consolidation System and Conditional Disability Discharge Tracking System'into one integrated system. The re-engineering effort is supposed to improve efficiency, reduce costs and improve customer service.
Front End Business Integration: This FSA project seeks to simplify and integrate the delivery of services to students. The business integration effort would improve FSA's ability to create a student-centric service delivery model and manage the Applications Processing and Common Origination and Disbursement processes in a more streamlined and cost-effective manner. Overall, FEBI is supposed to bring together all the front-end operations of federal student aid'awareness, eligibility determination, aid application processing, and grant and loan origination and disbursement.