Posted Date:September 28, 2018
| Author: | Federal Student Aid |
Subject: Recent Federal Student Aid Planned Outages and System Disruptions
We recently completed several major system migrations, including the transition of our data center to a new location. These system migrations are an important step in our continuous improvement of Federal Student Aid systems and necessary to meet federally-mandated security requirements. While the extended outage windows associated with these system migrations—including a recent planned outage of the Common Origination and Disbursement (COD) System and StudentLoans.gov website—have impacted our normal processing schedule during the last several months, these outages have been necessary to meet critical deadlines.
We understand these major system migrations have impacted our customers in various ways, including system disruptions. While many issues have been quickly identified and resolved, we are actively determining the root cause to minimize any such interruptions of service in the future. We are committed to improving system performance, security, and efficiency and appreciate your feedback and patience as we continue this effort.
Feedback provided directly to our contact centers has been beneficial to our efforts to diagnose and resolve specific issues. Thank you for your understanding as we continue to work toward our goal of improved processing.
Communicating System Outage Information
As a reminder, our regular weekly maintenance period is each Sunday 5-11 a.m. Eastern time (ET); many of our systems are unavailable during this time. The regular weekly maintenance period for fafsa.gov begins two hours earlier, at 3 a.m. ET.
In the event of a planned system outage that is in addition to our weekly maintenance period, we make every effort to notify our users in an electronic announcement posted to the Information for Financial Aid Professionals (IFAP) website. In the case of an outage solely of the COD System or the StudentLoans.gov website, we notify the community via the COD Processing Update that is posted to the COD Web Site (available under the “COD Resources” link on the homepage). We also post a COD Web Message about the outage on the welcome page that appears after login to the COD Web Site. Planned system outages are communicated to students, parents, and borrowers via announcements on StudentAid.gov and Federal Student Aid social media platforms.
If a system disruption occurs, our primary focus is to identify and resolve the issue as quickly as possible. We make every effort to notify the community of such a disruption as soon as possible while working to resolve the issue at hand.
Contact Information
Schools with questions about Federal Student Aid system disruptions should contact the customer service center of the specific system or website. Contacting the customer service center directly is the most effective approach for Federal Student Aid to quickly gather and evaluate system disruption information from users. Service center contact information is available on the IFAP website's Service Centers for Schools page or is provided on the specific system website.
Students, parents, and borrowers who are having difficulty logging in to a Federal Student Aid system should contact the Federal Student Aid Information Center (FSAIC) at 1-800-4-FED-AID (1-800-433-3243).