The Secretary of the Department of Education, specifically Federal Student Aid, is responsible for ensuring that postsecondary educational institutions and their agents that participate in the Title IV programs under the Higher Education Act (HEA) comply with the laws, regulations, and policies governing these programs. PEPS is Federal Student Aid’s information system for many of the organizations that have a role in administering student financial aid and other HEA programs. PEPS maintains data about eligibility, certification, demographics, financial, audit, default rates, etc. about schools, lenders, guarantors and other trading partners participating in the Title IV programs. PEPS is used by many organizations, such as Federal Student Aid, Office of Postsecondary Education, Office of Inspector General, General Accounting Office, Institutions, State Departments of Education, Guaranty Agencies, Regional and National Accreditors, and State Licensing Agencies.
Federal Student Aid contracted with Technik to continue the current level of PEPS and eAPP operations and maintain the PEPS and eAPP existing technical environment to ensure both availability and functionality of the system.
Project Accomplishments
Project accomplishments and associated activities are described below.
Task 1: Operations
Technik ensured that PEPS and eAPP was functionally available on a daily basis to support all of the associated business units and customers.
eAPP
On the front-end or external-side, schools use a web-enabled component called eAPP to apply for designation as an eligible institution, initial participation, recertification, reinstatement, change in ownership, or update their current approval. Updates included: name or address changes, new location or program, increased level of offering, change of officials, change to mailing address for publications.
PEPS
All other organizations use the client-server version of PEPS, with SEC and Financial Partners (FP) being the most frequent users. These organizations depend on many functional modules within PEPS to perform their day-to-day work. One critical function that PEPS must perform twice a year is to generate Cohort Default Rate (CDR) information for Default Management (DM) and FP. PEPS houses the CDR data, batch processes and system logic for this process. PEPS must generate the CDR notification letters and press package reports to inform schools, guarantee agencies (GAs) and lenders of any eligibility issues resulting from their calculated student loan cohort default rates. Lastly, PEPS must supply data via electronic interfaces to other Federal Student Aid Title IV Delivery Systems to ensure consistency of Title IV eligibility data across the enterprise.
Task 2: Maintenance
Technik was responsible for all formal maintenance releases to PEPS and eAPP. There were four scheduled maintenance releases each year – October, January, April, and July. Technik followed the standard operational methodologies consisting of, but not limited to, requirements traceability, configuration management, change management, version control, and documentation updates.
All software development followed the Federal Student Aid Solution Life Cycle Guide, which includes vision statement, project planning, requirements analysis, system design (logical and physical design), construction, testing, implementation, and transition support.
Overall Performance: Excellent
Delivery: Technik adhered to all deadlines and produced deliverables in a timely manner.
Cost Control: Technik performed within cost and budget.
Corrective Actions Taken: None
Deliverables
Deliverables included Management Plan, Weekly Status Reports, Monthly refresh, System Documentation for each Maintenance Release