Roger W. Baker, the Department of Veterans Affairs Assistant Secretary for Information and Technology testified today before the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Economic Opportunity. The following includes excerpts from his testimony:
In June 2008, Congress passed the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2008, establishing a new education benefit program under chapter 33 of title 38 United States Code, which VA refers to as the “Post-9/11 GI Bill.” This was the most extensive educational assistance program authorized since the original GI Bill was signed into law in 1944.
When the Post-9/11 GI Bill was passed by Congress and signed into law, VA had approximately 13 months to develop a new, complex system to process the newly eligible beneficiaries under the brand new program. Since then, VA has provided more than $25.9 billion in Post-9/11 GI Bill benefit payments to over 911,000 Veterans, Servicemembers, and their families, and to the universities, colleges, and trade schools they attend.
Creating new processes to provide timely Post-9/11 GI Bill payments to schools and student Veterans was an enormous challenge – and we have continued to improve our processes to ensure Veterans’ transition to student life is as simple as possible – so they can focus on the most important thing, their studies.
As part of our efforts to improve Post-9/11 GI Bill claims processing and transform VA to a digital operating environment, we have implemented a technology upgrade that cuts in half the time it takes VA to process benefit payments for currently enrolled students when compared to this time last year.
The process, which we call Long Term Solution (LTS), is an automated, end-to-end claims processing system that utilizes rules-based, industry-standard technologies for the delivery of Post-9/11 GI Bill education benefits. If effectively takes human claims processors out of the equation – using computer systems to process claims.
The calculation of benefits paid under Chapter 33 is a complex process. LTS has over 1,600 calculation rules that support benefits for Veterans, Servicemembers, and transferees. Seven types of training are supported, including: graduate, undergraduate, non-college degree, correspondence, apprenticeship and on-the-job training. Up to six benefits are calculated per term, including: housing, books and supplies, tuition and fees and Yellow Ribbon.
LTS also supports the entry of unlimited service periods, enrollment periods, and changes to enrollment periods. Post-9/11 GI Bill recipients are taking advantage of their education benefits in a variety of different education environments – and time tables – and ensuring that all different types of GI Bill claims are processed quickly and efficiently was essential in building an automated processes.
The bottom line is LTS is working. Processing timeliness has improved significantly since implementation. At the end of January, we had approximately 86,000 claims pending, 50 percent lower than the total claims pending the same time last year. The average days to process Post-9/11 GI Bill supplemental claims has decreased by 16 days, from 23 days in September 2012 to 8 days in January 2013. The average time to process Post-9/11 GI Bill original education benefit claims in January was 34 days.
Veterans’ educational benefits are the vehicle by which many of our Nation’s heroes pursue their educational goals and successfully transition to civilian life. VA is dedicated to ensuring that Veterans are able to make well-informed decisions concerning the use of their benefits and receive a quality education. We will continue to work hard to improve our education benefits delivery processes and we will take the lessons learned in automating these education claims and use them to improve delivery of all VA benefits.
Samantha O’Neil is a communications specialist with the Veterans Benefits Administration.
The VA overall is failing. The new system being put in place for claims (disability for example) has almost doubled the processing times, resulted in lost documents, wrong decisions , and green new hires that do not have experience with claims. Wait times for decisions can take years instead of the proclaimed 275 days. I know new systems have bugs but the adverse effect this has on claimants is overwhelming and anxiety causing to say the least.
I agree!
This is exactly what needs to stop with the VA. They continue to feed the American public with this type of B.S. on how well they are doing when the facts are that Most Veterans are suffering as a direct result of the things the VA and VA officials and in many cases employees put veterans through with claims. The VA spends millions on studies on what is wrong and why so many vets give up, too many choose suicide or homelessness over dealing with the VA. The VA violates the law and due process rights and they get away with it. This Must Stop and accountability of VA officials is mandated by law. The VA does not need to look too far to find out what is wrong, walk into any VA Regional Office, read the OIG reports or college studies and look on Any VA site, there are several stories Everyday on the suffering of Veterans and how they are or already have lost everything they own due directly to the VA claims process. Things will only only continue to get worse until the VA stops the games and owns up to it’s total failure including the death of countless veterans. It will eventually come out there are more people in the media starting to realize there is a problem and it is Bigger they they ever thought.
Very good article Sam!
Keep your fingers crossed on it’s functionality!
The VA Administration is extremely overwhelmed; no argument can be made about that. When you look at workloads I think they are doing pretty good with what they have to work with. There’s a wait but patience to sit back and let them do their job instead of calling and calling and calling and emailing over and over and continually complaining only slows things down more. It takes manpower to address call, e mails and complaints when that manpower could be used more productively. I appreciate ALL that VA does for me and my family. I think they are great…..and YES, Ive had to wait years for compensation processing.