After last year's FAFSA launch issues, the U.S. Education Department employed College Board leaders Jeremy Singer and Jeff Olson to improve the 2024-25 rollout. Their approach focused on fixing management flaws, enhancing collaboration, and addressing software vendor communications. The recent launch has been met with better reception and completion rates, succeeding by implementing critical changes in operations and management. Their feedback memo highlights past failures and aims to guide future improvements for FAFSA's processes.
We heard from an engineer who had worked on FAFSA for 30 years, who said that the collaboration we had during [the 2024-25 FAFSA rollout] was the most productive of his entire career.
Singer and Olson's memo detailed shortcomings at the department include poor management of multiple outside software vendors, scattered leadership priorities and unrealistic timelines.
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