The Department of Education is launching through the National Student Loan Database System a myNSLDS Button for students this fall. The new funcationity will allow students to access/download their student loan, grant and enrollment information in a flat "machine-readable" file. Pretty cool.

The myNSLDS Button follows on other initiatives including the Blue Button and the Green Button. The Blue Button allowed veterans access to their medical data and the Green Button is being rolled out by organizations like the California Public Utility PG&E to give access for consumers to their energy data.

These represent steps in open access to data for many consumers. While this is still developing there are a number of possible use cases. In no particular order:

All of the new start ups and some of the older players in student loan management/repayment (see previous post here)
Quicken's Mint.com and other full service financial monitoring/organziational software (either cloud or desktop based).
Fraud alerts and credit monitoring.
School based systems that let student monitor student loans while they are in school (maybe even through school portal websites?).
Mobile iOS and Android apps for NSLSD.

It should be interesting to watch to see the possiblities unfold for the use of this data.