60d Comment Response

October 3, 2016

Suzanne Martindale

National Advocacy Organization

RE: ED-2016-ICCD-0079-0004

Dear Suzanne:

Thank you for the comments that you submitted pursuant to the information collection activities about the U.S. Department of Education’s (Department) cash management contract URL collection (July 15, 2016, 81 FR 46072). As you are aware, the Department is collecting URLs that host institutional contracts and contract data relating to campus banking agreements as provided in the new cash management regulations published on October 30, 2015.

The Department has created a centralized database so that interested parties, such as students, families, press, institutions, and researchers to easily access and compare banking agreements at different institutions. This searchable database is available at StudentAid.gov under the FSA Data Center. Interested parties will be able to compare agreements based on the data submitted by institutions. Included in our information collection are: basic information about the institution, the URL where these agreements may be obtained, and, beginning in September 1, 2017, at the same URL where these agreements may be obtained, where interested parties may find the total consideration paid or received by the institution or parties under the contract, the number of students who had financial accounts under the contract at any time during the most recently completed award year and the mean/median costs incurred by those student accountholders. We believe that the information collection will satisfy the regulatory requirements that schools must report to the Secretary the URL information where their contracts and contract data may be obtained.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at CashManagementQuestions@ed.gov.

U.S. Department of Education