We conducted an audit to determine whether the Federal Student Aid office (FSA) has effective plans for transitioning assigned activities to itsBusiness Process Operations (BPO) vendors and the status of the transition. We found that FSA has not developed effective plans for transitioning assigned activities to its BPO vendors. We found weaknesses related to FSA’s schedule management and lifecycle management methodology (LMM) documentation and related reviews. This included LMM documentation not always including required signoffs or indicating that required steps were completed. We also determined that the non-servicing phase was fully transitioned in March 2022, but the planned transition of the servicing and recovery phases has been pushed back repeatedly. FSA plans the servicing phase to be transitioned by November 2024. There is no planned transition date for the recovery phase. We also found that all of the BPO vendors initially struggled to meet non-servicing phase performance metrics. FSA revised the performance framework to lower targets for some metrics and remove others, which resulted in all vendors achieving passing scores. We made eight recommendations to improve FSA’s ability to effectively transition the servicing and recovery phases to BPO vendors and to ensure that performance metrics are realistic and achievable.
Open Recommendations
| Recommendation Number | Significant Recommendation | Recommended Questioned Costs | Recommended Funds for Better Use | Additional Details | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.1 | Yes | $0 | $0 | ||
| We recommend the FSA Chief Operating Officer ensure that best practices are followed in maintaining the BPO masterschedule for the remaining transition activities, including updating schedules and tasks to reflect current progress,keeping task identification numbers and names consistent on updates to the master schedule, and maintaining aschedule narrative to provide an explanation of changes made to the master schedule. | |||||
| 1.2 | Yes | $0 | $0 | ||
| We recommend the FSA Chief Operating Officer ensure that BPO vendor project schedules are reviewed for alignmentwith the FSA master schedule and with each other. | |||||
| 1.3 | Yes | $0 | $0 | ||
| We recommend the FSA Chief Operating Officer ensure that FSA’s LMM is followed for the remaining phases to betransitioned, to include completing all required steps and documentation, maintaining required documentation, andobtaining required signatures for each stage gate before system release. | |||||
| 1.4 | Yes | $0 | $0 | ||
| We recommend the FSA Chief Operating Officer ensure that each task in the master schedule has staff assigned to itwho will be responsible for ensuring that the task gets completed. | |||||
| 1.5 | Yes | $0 | $0 | ||
| We recommend the FSA Chief Operating Officer ensure that FSA provides adequate staffing resources to the Next Genoffice to effectively transition assigned servicing and recovery activities to the BPO vendors. | |||||
| 1.6 | Yes | $0 | $0 | ||
| We recommend the FSA Chief Operating Officer establish a baseline schedule for the specialty servicing transition assoon as possible now that transition timeframes have been established. | |||||
| 3.1 | Yes | $0 | $0 | ||
| We recommend the FSA Chief Operating Officer continue to assess the SLA targets for non-servicing activities to ensurethey are realistic and achievable while also providing FSA and its customers FSA’s desired level of service. | |||||
| 3.2 | Yes | $0 | $0 | ||
| We recommend the FSA Chief Operating Officer review specialty servicing and recovery related SLAs to ensure they arerealistic and achievable before the activities are transitioned to the BPO vendors. | |||||
