Status Updates
2022
During the first quarter, the project functional team, The Office of Scholarships and Financial Aid (OSFA), and other college departments completed an intense Interactive Design and Prototype (IDP) session. The IDP process focused on operational processes and business requirements, as well as how Oracle Student Financial Aid (SFA) will meet campus needs. Teams identified processes requiring improvements for data collection and suggested standardizing or re-engineering other processes.
Through the second quarter, the project team finalized the Release 1 business requirements and continued working through the business requirements of future project releases. The project developers remained focused on building required integrations and weekly SFA product Q&A sessions with Texas One Stop and Office of Scholarship and Financial teams continued.
In the third quarter, the project team and the project consulting partner, Sierra-Cedar, initiated the first phase of System Integration Testing (SIT) and User Acceptance Testing (UAT).
In the fourth quarter, after a thorough analysis of the associated risks, costs, and opportunities, teams have decided to extend the Oracle Student Financial Aid (SFA) implementation timeline by one year and begin the phased launch in SPRING 2024. With the extension of the SFA implementation timeline, we are currently updating the project scope, goals, milestones, and calendar, and we will keep units informed as SFA system implementation progresses over the coming year.
2023
The Oracle Student Financial Aid (SFA) implementation continues on a path for a phased launch starting SPRING 2024. The efforts coincide with the Dept. of Ed. significant overhaul of federal student aid, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®). To implement the regulatory changes for the 2024-25 Academic Year, the Dept. of Ed. pushed forward its FAFSA application open date to December 2023. Universities, Colleges, and Financial aid software vendors expect an increase in administrative burden that may be in part from parents' or students' confusion around the regulatory changes. The information shared highlights the backdrop teams are diligently working under to prepare a successful phased launch of the new financial aid software that will exist outside the current mainframe structure and simultaneously integrate data from multiple community systems.