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When the U.S. Department of Education (ED) launched the Common Origination and Disbursement (COD) system in May 2002, the goal was to converge several systems, Federal Direct Lending, Pell Grants and campus-based programs into one. The COD system uses XML technology which is designed for real-time data exchange and transactions. From that, the Common Record is a new standard within the financial aid community. The Common Record standardizes the data elements, definitions, edits and structure across Pell Grants and Direct Loans. It is a “flexible record” that can also be used for FFELP.
Schools continue to exchange a lot of the same data, but Common Record takes advantage of the commonality across programs to maximize the use of common data elements and edits so schools can eliminate sending redundant student identifier information. Student and parent recipient data, such as name, Social Security Number (SSN), date of birth, and other non-program specific data will be stored once, so a student or parent will have one identifier record in COD for all programs.
ED will phase in the implementation of Common Record over a three-year period. All schools must become full participants for the 2004-05 award year.
Why combine Common Record and CommonLine?
FFELP and the alternative loan programs service providers are committed to expanding the benefits of the Common Record. Through NCHELP’s Electronic Standard Committee (ESC), which brings these various FFELP and alternative loan groups together that convergence of the Common Record and CommonLine should be a major goal. FFELP and alternative loan providers look at the Common Record plan as an opportunity to provide streamlined efficient processes to their school partners and the school software developers.
Some of the many benefits of convergence of the Common Record and CommonLine are:
- ease of programming one format across multiple financial aid programs;
- better utilization of resources – financial and staff; and
- continuation of standardization.
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