Defects in Education Department’s FAFSA processing system release called out by GAO

Delays and errors were among the “troubling” issues identified with the Department of Education’s new system for its Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form, the Government Accountability Office said this week.

In a report and congressional testimony released Tuesday, the GAO said the education agency’s Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) pinpointed and addressed defects in the FAFSA Processing System (FPS) before deployment, but continued to find “numerous defects” after its launch. FSA currently has 20 unresolved issues with FPS, including those of critical, high and medium severity. 

During a House Education and the Workforce subcommittee hearing Tuesday, Marisol Cruz Cain, the GAO’s director of IT and cybersecurity, highlighted a recommendation in the report to assist with the agency’s current incremental deployment approach. “Our recommendation is to … make sure all the functionality is tested thoroughly to make sure it’s functioning as it’s intended and to actually implement that end-user testing,” she said.

An example of bad functionality noted in the GAO report were instances of the FSA overestimating some students’ aid eligibility “by erroneously excluding their families’ assets from the calculation.” FSA reported that the error affected a small number of applicants and that the agency addressed errors when forms were processed.

FSA officials, however, did not identify defects before deployment, per the GAO, which the agency attributed to reduced planned testing activity to “focus on deploying input and development and primary eligibility determination functionality.”

Officials told GAO that the decision was made in order to focus on deploying functionality to allow users to start submitting applications. FSA additionally told GAO that “they accepted the risk of reducing testing activities because the application cycle was already late and the department was required to launch by the statutory deadline of Jan. 1, 2024.”

The report recommended that the agency take action to assess the role of both the overall agency and the FSA’s chief information officers in the development of the FPS, and then implement a plan for providing the department CIO with “a significant role in the governance and oversight of the system while clarifying the responsibilities between the department and agency CIO.”

GAO said it will continue to examine FPS defects and how the agency has moved to resolve them.