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Meteor Governance Implementation Information Project History History The Meteor Project had its inception in the spring of 2000, when a number of chief executive officers and chief information officers from numerous guarantee agencies and related institutions gathered together to discuss what is happening in the marketplace related to customers and competitors. This meeting was organized and sponsored by the National Council of Higher Education Loan Programs (NCHELP), which is the trade association for guaranty agencies. By the end of the meeting, it was concluded that the community of participants in the Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP) should work together to create an information network to provide aggregated financial aid information to their customers. After that meeting, NCHELP brought together the interested guaranty agencies and lending institutions to begin supporting the development of the concept and identification of the technologies that would be needed to obtain the goal. At that time, the number of sponsoring agencies and institutions were few in number. Project sponsorship has continued to increase and currently there are over 40 industry sponsors. In January 2001, Instructional Media & Magic (IM&M), a technology company, through collaboration with the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC), developed a proof-of-concept prototype to illustrate that the project was technologically feasible. This prototype was successfully implemented by March 2001, strengthening the Meteor concept and technologies being considered for product development. July 2001 marked the initiation of the Meteor advisory team. The team has been meeting regularly and its mission is to oversee the business and technological development of the Meteor project. During early meetings of the advisory team it was agreed that the first release of software is to be developed for use by Financial Aid Professionals. Subsequent releases allow for student, parent, borrower, customer service representative, and lender access to aggregated loan information. October 2001 NCHELP partnered with Priority Technologies, Inc. (PTI), a technology service provider that focuses on helping IT organizations transition to new Internet technologies, to design and construct Meteor software. PTI had already been a Meteor Partner since April of 2001 and agreed to build the Meteor software as a gift to the Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP) industry. February 2002 the first Meteor system components were made available by PTI for integration and testing in sponsor systems. Early April 2002, Meteor Advisory Team’s Technology sub-team tested the first release of the software. The team confirmed the installation and configuration of all of the software was working correctly. Since this time, many FFELP providers have implemented the Meteor data provider and access provider software. Over the next several years, the Meteor Project has won several awards for its innovative contribution to higher education. The Meteor team also continued to work with the industry to bring new features and customized applications to the higher education community. Among the new and custom applications were:
April, 2008 Meteor version 3.3 was released. This version restored access to the LoanLocator service provided by the National Student Clearinghouse. This service provides a comprehensive source of non-commercial student loan information, including data on newly originated loans and a complete participant list. The new version also incorporated additional usability features that provide easier navigation through the Meteor screens, as well as new messages to assist the user in reading the data provided. Other features new to Meteor 3.3 include the ability for data provider organizations to appropriately filter data responses based on organization type and organization code and the ability of the Meteor Help Desk to trouble shoot network issues with the new Meteor status Service. Perhaps some of the most important features in Meteor 3.3 are the enhanced security features that were incorporated. From the strengthened SAML assertion to improved logging or our most secure data request ever, Meteor version 3.3 is the most secure Meteor version to date. For more detailed information about all of the new features in Meteor 3.3, we suggest reading the Meteor 3.3 Release Notes. Founding Sponsors The Founding Sponsors are the original organizations that provided the initial human resources and capital to pursue the proof of concept and the initial release of the Meteor software.
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