In fact, the Department’s Office of Inspector General was unable to express an opinion on the fiscal year 1994 FFELP principal financial statements, taken as a whole, because of the unreliability of student loan data on which the Department based its expected costs to be incurred on outstanding guaranteed loans. Yet operating in such an environment presents complications due to the lack of uniformity in how the systems handle and store information. This has still not been accomplished. Department officials have acknowledged that integration is important and has not been fully achieved. One example of how this disparity can affect program operations can be seen in the differences in how student enrollment status is stored in NSLDS, compared with the system that supports the Pell Grant Program. Acquisition of Stand-Alone Systems Continues, Increasing Problems and Cost

The Department has a compelling need for a systems architecture that would enable the eventual integration of all title IV systems. They are also expensive. As I mentioned earlier, this is a costly approach to systems acquisition. Student Financial Aid Systems Contract Costs Over 5 Years

Pell Grant Recipient Financial  Management System (PGRFMS)
National Student Loan Data System  (NSLDS)
FFELP System (FFELPS)
Central Processing System (CPS) (includes multiple data entry contracts)

Related GAO Products

Student Financial Aid Information: Systems Architecture Needed To Improve Programs’ Efficiency (GAO/AIMD-97-122, July 29, 1997). Department of Education: Status of Actions To Improve the Management of Student Financial Aid (GAO/HEHS-96-143, July 12, 1996). Additional copies are $2 each.
Why GAO Did This Study

GAO discussed its review of the Department of Education's progress in integrating its National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS) with other student financial aid systems, as required by law.

What GAO Found

GAO noted that: (1) the Department of Education has made only limited progress in integrating NSLDS with the other student financial aid systems that support title IV programs; (2) this is largely because the Department has not developed an overall systems architecture, a framework needed to allow these disparate systems to operate in concert with each other; (3) as a result, while information can be shared among systems, the process is cumbersome, expensive, and unreliable; (4) further, the lack of a systems architecture allows the proliferation of individual stand-alone systems; (5) this is expensive, not only with respect to system procurement, operation, and maintenance, but also in terms of efficiency; (6) such an approach has served immediate program needs on a limited basis, but undermines sharing of student financial aid information across programs; and (7) this, in turn, can result in different databases containing different and perhaps conflicting information on the status of student loan or grant.