The objectives of our inspection were to determine if (1) for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) Simplification Act and student loan forgiveness initiatives, Federal Student Aid office (FSA) has prepared accountings of appropriated funds, obligations, administrative expenses, and staffing for fiscal years (FY) 2021–2024; and (2) FSA provided Congress with detailed spend plans of anticipated uses of funds made available under the FYs 2021–2024 appropriations laws.
We found that FSA does not have readily available full accountings of appropriated funds, obligations, administrative expenses, and staffing related to its FAFSA Simplification Act and student loan forgiveness initiatives for FYs 2021–2024. We also found that FSA provided spend plans to Congress from FYs 2021–2024 as required by the respective appropriations acts, though FSA’s initial submissions to Congress were late in all four fiscal years. Additionally, one of the required subsequent quarterly updates was not submitted in FY 2023, and another quarterly update was late in FY 2024. We also found that the spend plans provided limited information specific to the use of funds for FSA’s FAFSA Simplification Act and student loan forgiveness initiatives.
We made three recommendations to the FSA Chief Operating Officer. These included (1) determining the feasibility and appropriateness of implementing a managerial cost accounting system and (2) evaluating the financial information requirements for FSA’s initiatives and projects and determining if FSA’s existing information systems support the reporting of financial information consistent with the expectations of external stakeholders. We also recommended that the FSA Chief Operating Officer, in coordination with the Department of Education’s Budget Director, ensure that spend plans and quarterly updates are submitted timely and comply with requirements.
Related Work Products: See other work related to the Federal Student Aid programs.