Response to the Department of Education's Request to Reconsider the High-Risk Designation of Federal Student Aid Programs

This letter is in response to the Secretary of Education's May 2, 2003, letter requesting that we make a commitment to reconsider by early this summer our high-risk designation of the Department of Education's Student Financial Aid (SFA) programs. In that letter, the Secretary of Education outlined how the department has addressed many of the concerns we have identified and the plans it has underway for continued improvements, as well as its plans to update Federal Student Aid's (FSA) Five-Year Performance Plan. In order to help ensure that planned and completed actions address the issues raised in our recent High-Risk and Performance and Accountability reports, Education offered to provide a series of briefings to our key managers on: plans and progress for sustaining the clean opinion on the department's financial statements; FSA progress on its modernization efforts and FSA Data Strategies Framework; FSA program integrity initiatives, including FSA default prevention and collection strategies; and progress on One-ED (the department's human capital planning initiative).