Education taps Perot to upgrade biz management

The Education Department awarded Perot Systems a five-year contract Aug. 30 to upgrade its business management processes. The deal is potentially worth $17 million.

The company will perform the work in two phases with the goal of completing it in early 2009, said Jane Glickman, a spokeswoman for Education.

Perot will integrate and streamline the business processes that support Title IV activities, Glickman said. Title IV covers all higher education funding, and the department’s 10,000 operating partners include lenders, loan servicers, loan guarantee agencies, colleges and universities, and software providers.

Education’s Federal Student Aid (FSA) office will manage the contract, she said.

The FSA Web site was shut down temporarily last week when a malfunction with the site’s software, which Affiliated Computer Services created and manages, potentially exposed the personal data of about 21,000 student borrowers who logged on during a 36-hour period.

A public relations official at Perot’s headquarters in Texas directed queries to a colleague in the Washington, D.C., area, who had not replied by deadline to a request for comment.