IT Standards Library
Welcome to the Federal Student Aid Chief Information Officer’s Information Technology (IT) Standards Library. Federal Student Aid and its contractors must comply with IT standards and guidelines applicable to all federal agencies. They must also comply with the policies and procedures specific to the U.S. Department of Education and Federal Student Aid.
The IT Standards Library offers pertinent references for those who do or would like to do business with Federal Student Aid. Documents selected for the library, however, may not encompass all of the documentation or references necessary to perform work for Federal Student Aid. The library includes material in three broad categories:
- U.S. Department of Education Specific Resources
- Federal Student Aid Specific Resources
- Select Federal Standards and Guidelines
U.S. Department of Education Specific Resources
This section of the IT Standards Library includes documents pertinent to the U.S. Department of Education as a whole.
Resources
- Security Requirements for Contractors Doing Business with the Department of Education
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The Department uses its Administrative Communications System to issue policies and procedures applicable to Department employees and contractors. Handbooks and departmental directives identify security policies and procedures contractors doing business with the Department must comply with.
- Department of Education's OMB Budget Exhibit 300
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Redacted versions of business cases (Exhibit 300) for the Department’s major IT initiatives, as required by OMB Circular A-11 – Preparation, Submission and Execution of the Budget. This list includes the Exhibit 300s for Federal Student Aid.
Federal Student Aid Specific Resources
This section of the IT Standards Library includes documents that are specific to doing business with Federal Student Aid based on the IT lifecycle.
- General References
- Requirements / Development Services
- Testing Services
- Application and Maintenance Support
- Program Quality Assurance / Independent Verification and Validation
General References
- Work Products Guide
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The Federal Student Aid Work Products Guide (WPG) guides Federal Student Aid project managers and vendors through the deliverables decision-making process during the project lifecycle (from initiation through closing). Federal Student Aid expects vendors to use the WPG to create the required work products: the WPG provides templates, guidelines, and concepts associated with each required work product.
The WPG is provided as a 34MB ZIP file. After downloading the file, please extract the entire ZIP file and open the "WPG4.3.doc" document. Extracting the entire ZIP will allow the links within the WPG to work correctly.
Note: The WPG is currently being updated. As such, the documents below may be a newer version for a document that is listed in the WPG. The newer versions supersede those in the WPG documents. Also, most of the Requirements/Development Services documents are new and are not listed in the WPG.
- Enterprise Work Breakdown Structure
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The Enterprise Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) aligns with the Federal Student Aid Work Products Guide to provide employees and contractors a standard language and definitions to use throughout acquisition and project lifecycles. It includes a standard WBS dictionary. This Enterprise WBS can be tailored for a specific project by choosing the appropriate elements from this standard WBS.
- Technology Standards and Products Guide
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The Federal Student Aid Technology Standards and Products Guide (Guide) provides an organized, systematic way of classifying Federal Student Aid's information technology infrastructure and provides a basis for understanding the basic principles, assumptions, and rules governing the development of Federal Student Aid information technology policies.
- Enterprise Operational Change Management Plan
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The Enterprise Operational Change Management Plan defines Federal Student Aid’s operational change management concepts related to enterprise events, configuration and release management.
Requirements / Development Services
- Technical Architecture Support Service
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Federal Student Aid Technical Architecture Support Services (TASS) maintains a collection of technical architecture models covering the various solution domains (e.g., Portal Architecture, Application Architecture) as well a collection of standards and guidance documents that define Federal Student Aid's standards for Requirements and Design artifacts. The TASS documentation zip file contains this collection of models, standards and guidance documents.
The TASS documentation zip file has been created to guide solution vendors in proposing and creating solutions that are aligned with Federal Student Aid’s technical infrastructure and architectural vision. These standards should be referenced when preparing requirements and design artifacts as part of a development effort. Federal Student Aid's technical quality reviews use these standards as the basis for evaluating a solution's compliance to the enterprise standards at predefined lifecycle checkpoints.
Note: Contractors may obtain a copy of the Security Architecture Model component of the TASS Documentation by contacting their Contracting Officer post award.
- Enterprise Data Management Resources
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These following resources provide context and history for Enterprise Data Management at Federal Student Aid on current and planned data management initiatives.
- Enterprise Data Management Concept of Operations (ConOps)
- Data Migration Roadmap: A Best Practice Summary
- Data Model Standards and Guidelines, Registration Policies and Procedures
- Data Standardization Policies and Procedures
- Enterprise Data Management Data Governance Plan
- Enterprise Conceptual Data Model (ECDM)
- Enterprise Data Management Data Policies
- Enterprise Data Dictionary Standards
- Federal Student Aid – ECDM – Business Information
- PESC Guidelines for XML Architecture and Data Modeling
Testing Services
- Enterprise Testing Standards Handbook
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Provides standards and guidance to Federal Student Aid employees and contractors regarding effective test planning, repeatable test processes, standardized templates, defect management and other tools that will help make test efforts better planned, executed and monitored.
Application Operations and Maintenance Support
- Virtual Data Center Concept of Operations
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The VDC Concept of Operations provides a description of the strategies for implementing changes in the data center operations and services for Federal Student Aid. These strategies are based on an IT industry approach to developing solutions based on people, processes, tools, and technologies. CIO is implementing a resource plan to obtain the skills and resources to support future operations of the data center.
Program Quality Assurance / Independent Verification and Validation
- Independent Verification and Validation Handbook
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This document outlines in detail, Federal Student Aid’s IV and V practices from the Life Cycle Management, to the "best practices" adopted by the organization in Independent Verification and Validation. The document includes an introduction to metrics collection and reporting methodologies.
- Post Implementation Review (PIR) Process Description
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Guidelines and common procedures that define the objectives, activities, and documentation required to perform a Post Implementation Review (PIR) on a project.
- Production Readiness Review (PRR) Process
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The Production Readiness Review (PRR) serves as the final, formal, and documented decision point before a new application or a significant release of an existing application enters Federal Student Aid's production environment and is exposed to end-users.
General and Federal Guidelines
This section of the IT Standards Library highlights federal organizations involved in establishing and coordinating the implementation of federal laws, regulations, standards and guidelines applicable to information and information technology management. The standards and guidelines they promulgate apply to all federal agencies and departments. Entities seeking to do business with Federal Student Aid must be cognizant of and apply them.
Resources
- Office of Management and Budget Resources
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The U.S. Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) predominant mission is to assist the President in overseeing the preparation of the federal budget and to supervise its administration in Executive Branch agencies.
OMB oversees and coordinates the Administration's procurement, financial management, information, and regulatory policies, and issues associated instructions to federal agencies.
The OMB Web site offers a significant number of resources regarding information technology in the Executive Branch.
- National Institute of Standards and Technology Resources
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The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is a non-regulatory federal agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce. NIST's mission is to promote U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards, and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve our quality of life. The NIST website offers many valuable resources.
NIST's work in the area of information security is of particular interest and relevance to the work of Federal Student Aid. The Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002 (FISMA) charged NIST with developing and issuing standards, guidelines, and other publications to assist federal agencies in implementing the FISMA and in managing cost-effective programs to protect their information and information systems. NIST's Computer Security Resource Center offers extensive resources on this subject matter.
- U.S. General Services Administration Office of Government-wide Policy
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The U.S. General Services Administration’s (GSA) government-wide policymaking authority covers the areas of personal and real property, travel and transportation, information technology, regulatory information and use of federal advisory committees, and is carried out by GSA’s Office of Governmentwide Policy (OGP).
OGP provides leadership in the development of a policy environment and key enablers for electronic government, and supports OMB in the implementation of various E-Gov initiatives to standardize and streamline government processes.
Among other initiatives, OGP sponsors http://www.section508.gov, a website devoted to disseminating information regarding Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended. Section 508 of the Act requires federal agencies to make their electronic and information technology accessible to people with disabilities.
