Functional Statements > Federal Student Aid

G. Office of Strategy, Innovation, and Transformation

The Office of Strategy, Innovation, and Transformation (SIT) will boldly explore and seek new opportunities, and will seek to understand challenges of both the present and future so that FSA customers may benefit from these new opportunities and FSA may acquire the financial resources, physical tools, and human capital to meet such challenges.

The office will lead the primary customer management function within FSA. The office is charged with developing and deepening trust-based relationships with key customer groups. These relationships will position FSA to be more proactive in identifying potential issues impacting customers. In addition, the office will provide advice and counsel to key customer groups on various topics required for customers to remain in “good standing” with the Department. The office will work closely with FSA operational and mission support business units to ensure that customer needs and expectations are met. There are also two front office functions; one that performs ongoing transitional and transformational activities, and another that deals with administrative staffing and budget activities.

The primary Directorates within SIT are:

• Executive Research Directorate
• Executive Outreach and Engagement Directorate
• Executive Projects Directorate
• Strategy, Innovation, Engagement, and Oversight Directorate

Executive Research Directorate

The Executive Research Directorate is responsible for:

• Seeking out enhanced capabilities through market research including secondary research, surveys, focus groups, interviews, observation, or experiments/field trials;
• Searching for continuous improvement opportunities through research of FSA products, business process, marketing and services, which can be either “incremental” improvement over time or “breakthrough” improvement all at once;
• Oversight and refinement of current innovation implementations; and,
• Customer behavior research.

Executive Outreach and Engagement Directorate

The Executive Outreach and Engagement Directorate is responsible for:

• Interfacing with executive leadership of schools, other agencies, non-governmental organizations, & potentially aligned partners to understand opportunities and problems; and,
• Engaging with OMB, OGC, OPE, the Undersecretary, and others for transparency and communication.

Executive Projects Directorate

The Executive Projects Directorate is responsible for:

• Onboarding new Executive Talent;
• Engaging strategy consultants as needed;
• Reevaluating policy; and,
• Establishing & decommissioning Special Executive Projects.

Strategy, Innovation, Engagement, and Oversight Directorate

The Strategy, Innovation, Engagement, and Oversight Directorate is responsible for:

• Shepherding and mapping FSA’s strategy and verifying the alignment of FSA’s strategy with:
• FSA’s defined mission and functions
• Department of Education’s Strategic Plan; and,
• Executive Branch pertinent policies;
• Developing an Innovation Council to help develop and introduce original concepts (innovation conversations); and,
• Serving as an advisor relating to current and future procurement activities.