Signature Initiative: Integrated Student View

Provide students and parents with an enhanced customer experience across the student aid lifecycle.

Other Information:

Overview: FSA currently disseminates financial aid information to students through more than 14 websites and faces a number of challenges including: content inconsistency and redundancy across websites, multiple authentication requirements for a comprehensive view of financial aid portfolios, and duplicative administrative and resource requirements for the management and support of multiple websites. The ISV initiative will provide students and parents with an enhanced customer experience across the student aid lifecycle, with the goal of increasing financial aid awareness and college attendance, while simplifying the application and servicing process. FSA’s vision is to be the most trusted and reliable source of student financial aid information and services in the nation. The Integrated Student View initiative supports this vision by providing students and parents with an enhanced customer experience across the student aid lifecycle, eventually increasing financial aid awareness and attendance while simplifying the application and servicing process. Challenges: Some of the challenges that ISV addresses are: Awareness is low among key customer groups on where to find information. Reaching key audiences with a disjointed web presence can be costly and difficult to maintain. Relying on public service outreach does not provide consistent opportunities for customers to receive our communications. Continuing to improve the customer experience requires ongoing negotiations with third party providers and internal stakeholders. Promotion and outreach can be costly and difficult to sustain as budget levels are reduced. Featured Actions: In a two-phased approach, ISV will initially provide a “one-stop-shop” for students and parents for information related to financial aid, applying for federal aid and navigating through the college decision-making process. Phase One: ISV will overhaul student-facing content by transforming FSA’s flagship informational site into a plain language and user friendly website. Phase Two: ISV will supplement this information with transactional tools, such as status on loans, or other processes needed throughout the financial aid lifecycle, in a single view. Impact and Benefits: The ISV initiative will improve the customer experience by leveraging technology more effectively to better meet the demands of its customers and to find efficiency improvements, expand access to higher education, improve financial literacy and support customer decision-making. Providing information in a “one stop shop” experience where customers can look for information and find updates to their own personal information should reduce call volumes into the call centers particularly during peak timeframes. In addition, FSA expects the following benefits from this Signature Initiative: Students can access and easily digest FSA static content and information, and make greater use of newly available self-service tools; customers gain improved financial literacy and decision making skills; and the reduction of 14 websites creates cost efficiencies. Key Milestones and Timelines Phase I: Update FSA's informational websites using inhouse resources and retiring websites * July 2011: Project definition complete * December 2011: Current content assessed and streamlined * January 2012: Website content rewritten in plain language * March 2012: Expected launch of plain language FSA flagship informational site * April 2012: Websites that are currently maintained separately are consolidated. By eliminating unnecessary websites, the agency can consolidate internal and external resource time dedicated to operations. * April 2012: At least two FSA websites retired Phase II: Build upon Phase I functionality and enhancements, and add transactional capability * September 2011: Detailed planning begins * December 2011 and March 2012: Hold focus groups and usability studies with ISV key audiences to ensure designs and site functionality properly serve students. * March 2012: Build a persistent feedback box available on each page of ISV to continuously collect users’ feedback and make improvements. * March 2012: Update all student-facing materials (ISV, publications) to plain language. * March 2012: Allow customers to more easily complete their tasks by segmenting users by top tasks in their web experience. * March 2012: ISV will increase accessibility of service contact information by publicizing and streamlining contact information. * March 2012: FSA is streamlining internal processes by enhancing the student-facing content update and approval process. Through the implementation of a Content Management System, subject matter experts will update website, publication, or other content through automatic workflows instead of the email process used now. * June 2012: Build an interactive question section on ISV to allow customers to submit questions and suggest pre-populated answers based on top questions. * More details will be provided as scope and requirements work continues.

Stakeholder(s):

• Federal Student Aid


• Students: Key Customer Groups: Prospective students and their parents seeking opportunities to obtain postsecondary education along with students and parents who are borrowers are the primary customers served by ISV.


• Parents of Students

Objective(s):

SI 1: Feedback

SI 2: Best Practices

SI 3: Metrics and Standards

SI 4: Streamlining

Content