Federal Student Aid (FSA) continues to conduct a series of conference calls with the FFEL community workgroup in its data standardization project. The project attempts to define common data standards that can be exchanged between FSA and its partners throughout the entire life-cycle of an FFEL loan. These data standards will meet the needs of all FFEL reporting, including data exchanged with the:

• National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS)

• Debt Collection Management System (DCMS)

• Conditional Disability Discharge Tracking Systems (CDDTS)

The data standards will also meet requirements needed to track loan consolidations into either the FFEL or DL programs and ease financial reporting via the Financial Management System (FMS).

Members from the workgroup also presented on their progress as well as future goals at the Postsecondary Electronic Standards Council (PESC) 5th Annual Conference on Technology & Standards. NASFAA Associate Director of Communications Justin Draeger took part in a roundtable discussion on the FFEL data standardization project and what it means for students and schools.

"As we move towards common data standards between all stakeholders in federal student aid, students and schools will see information moving much quicker and freer than ever before," said Draeger. "Data standardization also means that we'll have easier access to information that will be vital for future policy analysis and decisions."

Within the last month the workgroup has divided into two subgroups. One subgroup is focusing on payment history and collection data and the other is concentrating on FFEL lender financial reporting.

The workgroup as a whole made significant progress in April and approved 17 additional data elements. To date the workgroup approved 44 data elements. Monthly summaries of the workgroup's progress are available online.

Posted 05/16/08 to www.NASFAA.org. Redistribution to non-NASFAA institutions is prohibited. Please submit Web Site questions or comments to Web@NASFAA.org.