[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                            EXAMINING VA.GOV

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                              BEFORE THE

                SUBCOMMITTEE ON TECHNOLOGY MODERNIZATION

                                 OF THE

                     COMMITTEE ON VETERANS' AFFAIRS

                     U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                      TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2023

                               __________

                           Serial No. 118-33

                               __________

       Printed for the use of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs
       
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                    Available via http://govinfo.gov
                    
                               __________

                   U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
54-154                       WASHINGTON : 2024                    
          
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------                         
                    COMMITTEE ON VETERANS' AFFAIRS

                     MIKE BOST, Illinois, Chairman

AUMUA AMATA COLEMAN RADEWAGEN,       MARK TAKANO, California, Ranking 
    American Samoa, Vice-Chairwoman      Member
JACK BERGMAN, Michigan               JULIA BROWNLEY, California
NANCY MACE, South Carolina           MIKE LEVIN, California
MATTHEW M. ROSENDALE, SR., Montana   CHRIS PAPPAS, New Hampshire
MARIANNETTE MILLER-MEEKS, Iowa       FRANK J. MRVAN, Indiana
GREGORY F. MURPHY, North Carolina    SHEILA CHERFILUS-MCCORMICK, 
C. SCOTT FRANKLIN, Florida               Florida
DERRICK VAN ORDEN, Wisconsin         CHRISTOPHER R. DELUZIO, 
MORGAN LUTTRELL, Texas                   Pennsylvania
JUAN CISCOMANI, Arizona              MORGAN MCGARVEY, Kentucky
ELIJAH CRANE, Arizona                DELIA C. RAMIREZ, Illinois
KEITH SELF, Texas                    GREG LANDSMAN, Ohio
JENNIFER A. KIGGANS, Virginia        NIKKI BUDZINSKI, Illinois

                       Jon Clark, Staff Director
                  Matt Reel, Democratic Staff Director

                SUBCOMMITTEE ON TECHNOLOGY MODERNIZATION

              MATTHEW M. ROSENDALE, SR., Montana, Chairman

NANCY MACE, South Carolina           SHEILA CHERFILUS-MCCORMICK, 
KEITH SELF, Texas                        Florida, Ranking Member
                                     GREG LANDSMAN, Ohio

Pursuant to clause 2(e)(4) of Rule XI of the Rules of the House, public 
hearing records of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs are also 
published in electronic form. The printed hearing record remains the 
official version. Because electronic submissions are used to prepare 
both printed and electronic versions of the hearing record, the process 
of converting between various electronic formats may introduce 
unintentional errors or omissions. Such occurrences are inherent in the 
current publication process and should diminish as the process is 
further refined.
                        
                        C  O  N  T  E  N  T  S

                              ----------                              

                      TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2023

                                                                   Page

                           OPENING STATEMENTS

The Honorable Matthew M. Rosendale, Sr., Chairman................     1
The Honorable Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, Ranking Member.........     2

                               WITNESSES

The Honorable Kurt DelBene, Assistant Secretary for Information 
  and Technology, Office of Information & Technology, U.S. 
  Department of Veterans Affairs.................................     4

        Accompanied by:

    Mr. Charles Worthington, Chief Technology Officer, Office of 
        Information & Technology, U.S. Department of Veterans 
        Affairs

    Mr. Ray Tellez, Acting Assistant Deputy Under Secretary for 
        Automated Benefits Delivery, Veterans Benefits 
        Administration, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs

                                APPENDIX
                     Prepared Statement Of Witness

The Honorable Kurt DelBene Prepared Statement....................    25

 
                            EXAMINING VA.GOV

                              ----------                              


                      TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2023

             U.S. House of Representatives,
          Subcommittee on Technology Modernization,
                            Committee on Veterans' Affairs,
                                                   Washington, D.C.
    The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 3:19 p.m., in 
room 360, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Matt Rosendale 
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
    Present: Representatives Rosendale, Mace, Self, and 
Cherfilus-McCormick.
    Also present: Representative Luttrell.

      OPENING STATEMENT OF MATTHEW M. ROSENDALE, CHAIRMAN

    Mr. Rosendale. Good afternoon. The subcommittee will come 
to order. Thank you so much for your patience. As you all are 
aware, we all have many tasks that we have to take care of 
through the course of the day, so many times they double 
schedule.
    We are here today to examine a pattern of problems with the 
VA.gov affecting veterans' benefit claims. The VA aggressively 
built out VA.gov over the past 5 years. Today, it is more than 
a website. It is a self-service platform for veterans to access 
the care and benefits that they have earned.
    I absolutely agree that veterans should be able to manage 
their healthcare and benefits online rather than waiting on 
hold with a call center to do everything. To perform all those 
functions VA.gov now interfaces with most of the systems we 
have discussed in previous hearings. Those systems and 
interfaces have significant bugs and some of them are simply 
obsolete.
    VA.gov has gaps and veterans are falling into those gaps. 
Nearly 100,000 veterans that we know of have been struggling 
with the VA.gov bugs to access their benefits. In some cases, 
these problems have been happening for years, but VA officials 
only recently discovered and disclosed them.
    In January, VA notified the committee that about 32,000 
veterans' disability compensation claims submitted through the 
website had been rejected. This had been happening since 2018. 
The website did not alert the veterans that an error had 
happened, so they thought that everything was normal. This is 
unbelievable. They just chalked it up to VA being slow on the 
delivery of their benefits. They never even called, inquired, 
or complained about it. That is how bad VA's reputation is.
    The website did not alert the veterans that an error had 
happened, so, again, they thought everything was normal. It 
took the VA 7 months to send letters to notify them.
    Then last month, as the intent to file (ITF) deadline under 
the The Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring our 
Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act was 
approaching, about 5,600 veterans received error messages when 
they tried to submit on the website. The VA initially had no 
idea what was even happening or that it was happening.
    On top of that, more than 56,000 veterans' requests to add 
or remove dependents on the VA.gov and its predecessor were not 
processed, causing them to be overpaid or underpaid. This has 
been happening all the way back to 2011. The 56,000 is just an 
estimate and the Department is still trying to come up with a 
plan on how to address the situation.
    Each of these four incidents was somewhat different, but 
they indicate a troubling pattern. We are going to get to the 
bottom of what happened and whether the glitches extend beyond 
the benefits functions of VA.gov and into other areas. This is 
the situation where the VA is badly in need of independent 
oversight. The veterans need to know that our witnesses have 
thoroughly investigated the extent of the problems, and this is 
not just the tip of the iceberg.
    The impacted veterans also need to hear from VA much more 
quickly. Months and years is completely unacceptable. Seven 
months to mail letters to the veterans whose claims were 
rejected is unacceptable and the veterans whose dependent 
updates were not processed deserve immediate help. When the VA 
Central Office gets around to it is not an acceptable response.
    VA.gov is vital and we need to make sure it is built on a 
solid foundation.
    I appreciate our witnesses joining us today to discuss how 
we are going to do just that. With that, I would yield to 
Ranking Member Cherfilus-McCormick for your opening statement.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SHEILA CHERFILUS-MCCORMICK, RANKING MEMBER

    Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank 
you to the witnesses for being here today.
    VA.gov is veterans' primary portal to access the care and 
benefits they have earned through their service to our country. 
It is concerning when we hear that there is an issue with this 
website, especially when Congress learns of three major issues 
in less than 1 month.
    In August, VA.gov failed to keep up with what we all knew 
was going to be a massive influx of disability claims. Veterans 
had until 11:59 p.m. on August 9 to submit their claims or an 
intent to file a claim associated with the PACT Act to have any 
potential benefits backdated to when the bill was signed in 
August 2022. The VA received so many submissions that it broke 
the website's ability to process them. Veterans began receiving 
error messages that caused confusion about whether their claim 
had been received or not.
    Then earlier this month, we learned that over 56,000 
veterans were potentially negatively impacted by the website's 
failure to process veterans' dependent status updates and that 
it took VA over a decade to recognize and fix this issue. As I 
understand it, VA still does not have a full understanding of 
the impacts of this issue on veterans and which veterans were 
affected.
    In the same notification we also learned that there is an 
issue with the VA.gov that has been preventing veterans from 
being able to appeal their claims decision, which is their 
right. I understand that the VA claims that these issues affect 
a small percentage of veterans, but we owe it to our veterans 
to ensure that they have access to functional and reliable 
technology to access their care and benefits.
    I do want to say a thank you to Assistant Secretary DelBene 
and Undersecretary Jacobs for the level of transparency they 
have provided on the recent issues with the VA.gov. I am not an 
IT expert, so I will not pretend that I fully understand the 
technological aspects of the issue, but I do understand how 
they are impacting veterans. I appreciate the VA's Office of 
Information and Technology (OIT) seems to be hyper focused on 
not only getting these identified issues fixed, but 
establishing a process to ensure that any future issues are 
identified and fixed more quickly. I am happy to hear this and 
we will work with the chairman to ensure that we hold you to 
it.
    While we are talking about VA.gov, I do want to talk about 
another issue with the website. Compliance with section 508 of 
the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 continues to be an issue with 
VA's website and IT solutions. We have raised this issue 
repeatedly with VA, and yet we continue to hear that VA.gov 
fails to meet the needs of blind and low-vision veterans. This 
is disappointing, especially as many of these veterans lost 
their vision due to conditions attributed to their military 
service. We owe them the same level of access as their sighted 
colleagues. I hope to hear from today's witnesses about a plan 
to ensure that this resource is available to all veterans 
equally.
    I look forward to today's testimony, and I yield back. 
Thank you.
    Mr. Rosendale. Thank you. Ranking Member Cherfilus-
McCormick.
    Before we proceed, I ask unanimous consent that Mr. 
Luttrell and any other members of the Disability Assistance and 
Memorial Affairs (DAMA) Subcommittee be permitted to 
participate in this hearing. Without objection, so ordered.
    I will now introduce the Veterans' Affairs witnesses on our 
first and only panel today. First we have Assistant Secretary 
for Information and Technology Kurt DelBene. We also have Chief 
Technology Officer (CTO) Charles Worthington. Finally, we have 
Mr. Ray Tellez, the Executive Director of the Office of 
Business Integration in the Veterans Benefits Administration 
(VBA).
    I ask the witnesses to please stand and raise your right 
hands.
    [Witnesses sworn.]
    Mr. Rosendale. Let the record reflect that all the 
witnesses have answered in the affirmative.
    Mr. DelBene, you are now recognized for 5 minutes to 
deliver your opening statement on behalf of the panel.

                   STATEMENT OF KURT DELBENE

    Mr. DelBene. Good afternoon, Chairman Rosendale, Ranking 
Member Cherfilus-McCormick, and members of the subcommittee. 
Thank you for the opportunity to testify about the Department 
of Veterans Affairs VA.gov website. I am accompanied today, as 
you noted, by Mr. Charles Worthington, VA's chief technology 
officer, and Mr. Ray Tellez, Executive Director of the Office 
of Business Integration from the Veterans Benefits 
Administration.
    As this committee is aware from our numerous meetings since 
my confirmation, VA is committed to providing exceptional care, 
services, and a seamless unified experience to our veterans. 
VA's Office of Information and Technology collaborates with VBA 
and various other VA offices to achieve this mission through 
the delivery of state-of-the-art technology, including VA.gov, 
a modernized website and VA's digital front door. Nearly 14 
million unique veterans and others use VA.gov each month to 
access information about the services and benefits provided by 
the Department. In August alone, we had over 19 million unique 
users.
    In the healthcare space in particular, we are an industry 
leader in our veterans' usage of our healthcare portal. The 
website is designed with a clear and intuitive navigation menu, 
enabling users to quickly find the information that they are 
seeking.
    The VA.gov project is one of the Department's most 
important initiatives. For the first time in the VA's history 
gives a comprehensive digital experience that provides veterans 
a single online location to learn about, apply for, use, and 
manage their VA healthcare and benefits. Since its relaunch in 
2018, VA.gov has seen dramatic growth both in usage and in the 
breadth of services offered on the platform. VA has added 
numerous features to VA.gov during its high-growth period. For 
example, veterans can now apply for caregiver benefits, 
digitally submit appeals, request a debt waiver, and view their 
debt and copayment balances, request and schedule healthcare 
appointments, and even check in for those appointments on their 
day of service.
    Integrating the various legacy systems into VA.gov has not 
been without challenges. As we proactively notified you on 
September 5, VA recently uncovered several technical issues 
impacting a small percentage of the website's traffic, which we 
are working very hard to address. I want to be very clear that 
despite the limited scope of these issues, we view these 
problems as unacceptable, and we at the VA deeply apologize to 
the impacted veterans. We are working relentlessly to ensure no 
veteran is negatively impacted by these technical issues, by 
ensuring veterans receive effective dates that respect their 
original submission timelines and forgiving any overpayment 
debts that may have been created due to the VA's technical 
mistake.
    Moving forward, the Department is taking immediate steps to 
prevent these issues or issues like this from happening in the 
future. VA will resolve these issues, prevent them from 
happening again, address them more quickly when needed, and, 
most importantly, make sure that all impacted veterans get the 
benefits and services that they deserve as quickly as possible.
    Chairman Rosendale, Ranking Member Cherfilus-McCormick, and 
members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to 
appear before you today. As I mentioned, VA.gov is one of the 
Department's most important initiatives and we have made a 
great deal of progress and amid tremendous growth in capability 
and capacity. We look forward to continuing to work with the 
subcommittee to address our greatest priorities and the 
challenges we face in our digital transformation. We value your 
steadfast commitment and support for our veterans.
    This concludes my testimony, and we look forward to 
answering your questions.

    [The Prepared Statement Of Kurt Delbene Appears In The 
Appendix]

    Mr. Rosendale. Thank you, Mr. DelBene. The written 
statement of Mr. DelBene will be entered into the hearing 
record.
    We will now proceed to questioning and I will recognize 
myself for 5 minutes.
    Mr. DelBene, at least 94,500 veterans' benefits have been 
delayed or disrupted because of the VA.gov problems. I 
understand that you are very proud of the website and millions 
of veterans that use it, but this is 94,500 veterans and their 
families whose personal finances may be disrupted or who may be 
waiting for months or even years, as we have heard in the 
record already, for disability compensation.
    Mr. DelBene, do you believe there is an acceptable error 
rate in VA.gov? If so, what would you define as an acceptable 
error rate?
    Mr. DelBene. Thank you for the question. I do not believe 
that it is acceptable for us to have errors that occur on the 
website that are not processed in a way that benefits the 
veterans and assures their intent. By that, in one of the 
places where I think we had challenges we were working on is 
when an error occurs in the system, make sure it gets passed 
off to a human being who can do the right thing in those cases. 
In that sense, I do not think there is an acceptable error 
rate. More particularly, I think every error that does occur--
because in software errors will occur--we need to, one, fix 
those errors and, two, we need to make sure that the veteran is 
handled in the appropriate way.
    Mr. Rosendale. Mr. DelBene, what concerns me the most about 
the VA.gov IT errors is that it took the VA years to notice 
them. I want to hear more about your internal review of the 
causes, but first and foremost, how are you going to improve 
your ability to detect and solve these problems in real time?
    Mr. DelBene. Thanks for the question. I am actually going 
to pass this one to Charles Worthington, our CTO, and have him 
take that one on.
    Mr. Worthington. Thank you for the question. We are working 
right now urgently to create a comprehensive review of each of 
the products that VA.gov offers so we can get a real-time sense 
of the error rates with all of the downstream services that 
VA.gov integrates with to deliver that feature. Something that 
we learned as a result of this incident is that we did not have 
a fast enough ability to identify these issues as they 
occurred. That is what we are really focused on with this first 
priority of getting better monitoring and observability set up.
    We have made a lot of progress on that goal since we 
announced that to you all. All of the benefit application forms 
are now in this dashboard with a great sense of what the 
success rate of each of those downstream transactions are.
    We view that, as you said, the time that it took the VA to 
identify these problems proactively was really unacceptable. We 
are working hard to make sure that that does not happen again.
    Mr. Rosendale. Mr. Worthington, as you are answering these 
questions, let me ask you, we have identified four areas that 
have extensive problems and delays. Which ones are you 
addressing first and exactly how are you working? How many 
people do you have focused on those tasks?
    Mr. Worthington. This is a top priority of our VA.gov team 
to get better sense of the health of each of those products. We 
have got a daily stand-up with probably a dozen or more folks 
talking about the progress in increasing the monitoring of 
those systems.
    I think, as I mentioned, the benefits applications forms 
are all already monitored. We are also paying a lot of 
attention to the health enrollment form, which has the upcoming 
deadline of September 30 for the special enrollment period. We 
are seeing really positive results with that.
    I think that, as Mr. DelBene said, the ability to know with 
confidence that once a veteran has hit submit on an application 
on VA.gov that that transaction is going to be honored, even if 
there is a downstream error, we are paying particular attention 
to those because we know that those are the source of the two 
issues that led to a potential delay.
    Mr. Rosendale. Okay. Mr. Tellez, what do you think is a 
reasonable turnaround time for a disability compensation claim? 
Let me preface that with assuming that all the proper 
documentation is turned in. Okay. All the proper documentation 
is turned in. What do you think is the reasonable time for a 
disability claim?
    Mr. Tellez. Thank you, Congressman, for your question.
    Right now we define it as under 125 days. In the world that 
I live in, we are trying to get those processed as quickly as 
possible because that is the expectation that veterans have in 
the real world. I would say that would be the answer, as quick 
as we can. I know we have had different programs to do that. I 
hope that answered your question.
    Mr. Rosendale. Mr. Worthington, have you determined the 
extent of the benefits-related VA.gov problems and whether they 
extend into the other functions of the website, like 
healthcare?
    Mr. Worthington. We are looking very closely at that exact 
question to identify if there were any similar problems, such 
as the dependency claim or the 526 claim errors. At this point, 
we have not identified anything on that scale, but that is 
something we are looking at very intently.
    Mr. Rosendale. Very good.
    Okay, I am down to it. I recognize Ranking Member 
Cherfilus-McCormick for 5 minutes for your questions.
    Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I wanted to get back to the timeliness issue that you 
touched upon. I want to be clear, why did it take you so long 
to become aware of the issues?
    Mr. DelBene. If I may, thank you for the question, that you 
have to separate that into which particular issue we are 
talking about.
    In the case of, for instance, dependency application to 
change, early on in 2021, there was an identification of an 
issue because the rules that were processing those as having 
failure cases. At that point there was actually a processing 
that was put in place. There is actually a rules processing 
error sheet that came out, a report that came out, and those 
were all manually handled by people to make sure the right 
thing happened.
    We thought at that point that was the extent of the problem 
until we started hearing from veterans and Veterans Service 
Organizations (VSOs) that there were other issues coming up. 
That was actually toward the end of 2022, the very beginning of 
2023. For that longer period of time, we actually did not think 
there was a broader problem.
    Once a broader problem was identified, we set up a cross-
functional team to actually go tackle that issue and solve the 
bug that we did then determine existed. In that case, that kind 
of explains why the gap.
    In other cases, it was very rapid to find the issue. For 
instance, the claims application, that was actually found quite 
rapidly and resolved quite rapidly. The issue we had in August 
of the website having errors, we fixed that one very quickly as 
well. It really depends upon the particular instance you are 
talking about.
    Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick. Well, we were talking about the 
issues that were identified in September 5 in the congressional 
notification which you touched upon.
    I also wanted to know, can I get your commitment that any 
veteran who missed out on the benefits because of the dependent 
status issue will be made whole and that they will receive 
those backdated benefits?
    Mr. Delbene. If I may, I will have Ray handle that one.
    Mr. Tellez. Thank you, Congresswoman. Yes, you have our 
commitment. We are currently in the process of assessing those, 
but our goal will be to make those veterans whole and make sure 
that they get the benefit that they have earned and deserved.
    Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick. That no veteran will receive a 
debt because the IT system failed?
    Mr. Tellez. That is the process that we are working from is 
not to create a debt because of the issue with the error that 
may have caused the debt.
    Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick. Mr. DelBene, I am sure that you 
are aware that we hold a series of VSO hearings every year in 
the spring. Every year we hear pleas from the Blinded Veterans 
Association for better oversight of VA's section 508 
compliance. They have raised concerns about not only VA.gov, 
but also with the IT system that veterans use, both as 
recipients of care and benefits and as employees of VA.
    Why has the VA not met the mandate of section 508 
compliance, specifically the VA.gov portal that veterans rely 
on to access their care and benefits?
    Mr. DelBene. Well, we take 508 compliance very seriously. I 
personally think it is a commitment that we need to honor and 
actually amp up our work there. Let me break that into a couple 
of different parts.
    The first thing is the VA.gov has a lot of content on it. 
That content can be separated into web pages or a lot of PDFs. 
We have been making steady progress in actually identifying the 
most used web pages and the most used PDFs and making sure that 
they are compliant with 508.
    If you then take the VA.gov, the functional part of it, it 
actually was built from the beginning to have a framework that 
actually makes it accessible to the blind. As we move more and 
more functionality onto VA.gov, we will inherit that 
accessibility.
    The one pivot we have made in the change is to actually 
target the things that are most used, whether it is 
documentation or whether it is functionality as well. I think 
we are doing pretty well there. There is more for us to do, but 
know that we take the commitment to 508 incredibly seriously.
    Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick. What is your timeline for full 
implementation or even substantial completion?
    Mr. DelBene. Well, I think that the effort toward 508 is 
going to be an ongoing effort. I think we are, if you take web 
pages, for instance, we are in the 90 percent compliance in 
terms of the number of hits that happen or, you know, 
essentially going from the most popular pages on down. Some of 
the thornier issues are in application spaces where there is 
custom logic, and those are the ones that I think are going to 
take a while, but I meet with the team every month to review 
our progress on this.
    Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick. Do you have a goal date arranged 
that we can actually be able to follow up on?
    Mr. DelBene. It is a good question. You know what I would 
love to do is get into a regular dialog with you, so I can show 
you our progress. I think we actually have an update for 
staffing on the 508 progress on the 27th. If there are specific 
questions, we would love to talk to you about those and walk 
you through it. I would love a regular engagement on that.
    Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield 
back.
    Mr. Rosendale. Thank you, Ranking Member Cherfilus-
McCormick.
    I will now recognize Representative Self for 5 minutes of 
questioning.
    Mr. Self. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I want to go back to the 56,000. When did you first 
discover this issue? Did I hear you say early 2021?
    Mr. DelBene. Mr. Tellez, do you want to take the chronology 
on that one?
    Mr. Tellez. Yes. Thank you, Congressman.
    We first heard about it, I believe, in August--November 
2021 of that error issue, was brought to us by IT. October 
2022, when we discovered the 32,000 veterans.
    Mr. Self. No, I am talking about the 57,000----
    Mr. Tellez. Oh, the dependencies, my apologies.
    Mr. Self [continuing]. dependencies that goes back to 2011.
    Mr. Tellez. Yes, so we discovered that in August 2021, is 
when we discovered there was a number of dependency claims that 
were being rejected from the system. We worked with IT to set 
up an Integrated Product Team (IPT) to investigate what that 
issue was. It was not until January 2023 when we discovered 
there was maybe a different problem, a bigger problem, when we 
got feedback from our call centers, from veterans who were 
having challenges----
    Mr. Self. Right.
    Mr. Tellez [continuing]. with dependency that were not on 
the list that we had. That is when we discovered there was 
maybe a different issue with that.
    Mr. Self. Mr. DelBene, what is the Quality Assurance (QA) 
on VA--on this website? What is the quality assurance? What are 
your checks? We have an issue from 2018 that you finally 
started addressing in August 2023. We have an issue from 2011 
that you determined--you finally found it in August 2021, a 
decade later.
    What is your quality assurance on your website? There are 
people, and my point is this, there are people behind every IT 
system. We are talking about IT systems here as though they are 
autonomous systems. They are not.
    What is your quality assurance for veterans? As the 
chairman pointed out, they just did not follow up and nobody 
caught it. Where are the people in this system?
    Mr. DelBene. That--in the typical scenario, software will 
get developed by developers, it will be passed to a full QA 
test in a preproduction environment.
    Mr. Self. I am not talking about the preproduction. I am 
talking about once you get it up and running, who is doing the 
quality checks, the percentage check, a 10 percent check, 
whatever? Who is doing that? That may be a question for Mr. 
Worthington, but who is doing that check?
    Mr. DelBene. No, it is----
    Mr. Self. It should not have taken a decade for us to find 
this if you had a QA process in place.
    Mr. DelBene. Let me start and then I will definitely pass 
it to Charles for more elaboration on it. Any of the systems 
that we run are monitored and have telemetry on them, so that 
they are checking for any error conditions that occur. In the 
particular cases we are talking about here, these are places 
where those error conditions actually were not caught by 
monitoring.
    We meet every single day of the year and walk through any 
issues that occur. One of the questions I ask most often is, 
was that error caused by or check caught by monitoring or not? 
We need to do more monitoring of situations like this and we 
are constantly adding to that monitoring. In these particular 
cases, it was a missed error check and we just have to admit 
that. We constantly improve it, but there is more for us to do.
    Mr. Self. You had the error check in place, it just did not 
work?
    Mr. DelBene. It did not hit these particular circumstances. 
Charles?
    Mr. Worthington. Yes. I would just add that I think the 
challenge that we encountered with the dependency claim issue 
is that the traceability of a transaction from the VA.gov 
website into the downstream systems, many of which are quite 
old, we do not have good traceability at this time of those 
transactions. That is one of the things we are working to 
address as a part of this systematic review.
    What we would like to have is an ability to check for sure 
that every transaction that is received on VA.gov has made it 
either into the downstream system that it is intended to do so 
it can be automatically processed, or, if for whatever reason 
there is some failure, that there is a backup sort of manual 
process that puts those in place.
    Mr. Self. Okay. Who was responsible for missing the quality 
checks and was there action taken against the person 
responsible for that? Are we holding anyone accountable for 
these errors?
    Mr. DelBene. I think there is multiple aspects to the 
answer there. First, I think Charles and I would both say we 
hold ourselves accountable for this and it is our 
responsibility at the end of the day. If there are errors like 
this, one, we work hard to make sure they are right, but at the 
end, you have to hold us accountable.
    The second area is I think that we have tried very hard in 
the team since I have started of creating an environment which 
I coined the phrase ``embrace the red''. You cannot have teams 
where they come into these status meetings fearful for their 
jobs if they come clean on an issue that occurs. I have 
encouraged the exact----
    Mr. Self. My time is out. I appreciate your response, but I 
think that people need to be held accountable. Holding someone 
accountable is not just saying you are accountable. It is 
sanctions against someone that missed this, because in this 
case, 56,000 veterans are paying the price.
    Chairman, I yield back.
    Mr. Rosendale. Thank you very much, Representative Self.
    I will now recognize Representative Luttrell for 5 minutes 
of questioning.
    Mr. Luttrell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To follow on, Mr. 
Worthington and Mr. DelBene, did anything happen to either one 
of you for this I would say egregious act against 56,000 
veterans? You were ultimately to be held responsible. I heard 
you say that, sir.
    Mr. DelBene. Right. I would certainly if somebody came to 
me and said, we want to take action, that, you know, obviously 
I have an----
    Mr. Luttrell. I am just trying to get clarification for 
myself and for Mr. Self. Nobody above you came down into your 
level and said, because of these errors that were made on 
56,000 veterans who served our country--and by the way, that is 
2011. That is right as the Iraqi war was drawn down. I am just 
curious. Nobody has approached either one of you saying that 
this was a problem?
    Mr. DelBene. Oh, they have definitely approached us and 
said this is a problem.
    Mr. Luttrell. But no actions were taken whatsoever?
    Mr. DelBene. Have they taken employment action against me--
--
    Mr. Luttrell. That is one of the problems with the VA 
system. I greatly appreciate what the VA does as a whole, but 
when you get down to the granular level, I think we have a 
problem with addressing the major issues in leadership and not 
being held accountable for things that they do or do not do, 
and uphold their fiduciary responsibilities to veterans like 
myself, like this gentleman here, and like that gentleman over 
there.
    Mr. DelBene. If I may respectfully, the environment and the 
culture that I have seen among the senior leadership under 
Secretary McDonough has been one of pushing for excellence in 
terms of execution, a support of our system.
    Mr. Luttrell. I agree. I think Mr. McDonough is doing a 
fantastic job, but that is not the question I am asking. The 
question I am asking is my concern is that nobody is holding 
you responsible for this. You said you were in charge of it, 
but I will move on.
    Mr. DelBene. If I may, just one. I think this is true for 
Mr. Worthington as well. We are our own worst critics in cases 
like this. We hold ourselves to an incredible standard.
    Mr. Luttrell. When I go home and talk to the veterans in my 
community who may or may not have been affected by this, and I 
look them in the face and say--and they ask me who is being 
held responsible, am I supposed to say the VA?
    Mr. Delbene. I think you are supposed to say the VA and the 
people in my team.
    Mr. Luttrell. Okay. What happened to you? Nothing. Zero. 
You are sitting here in front of me telling me that. That is 
the problem that we are trying to get past. That is the problem 
that we have to go back to our base and say, we are doing 
everything that we can to streamline this process.
    Mr. Tellez, 120 days. Are you a veteran, sir? Forgive me.
    Mr. Tellez. I am not.
    Mr. Luttrell. Okay. If I go back to my base and I say 120 
days, they will lose their minds. That is just something that 
we have to do right now, because I am asking you the questions 
and the answer that you give me to my question is 120 days. 
Now, if I go tell a veteran that who is in dire straits, I am 
the one that has to answer that question and I do not even work 
for the VA. You see the frustrations here?
    Mr. DelBene. Who is that to?
    Mr. Luttrell. That is rhetorical. Do not answer it. I will 
move on.
    Mr. Tellez, there are probably a lot of veterans who are 
concerned that the VA might have lost their claims and filings 
over the past decade because of this VA--I am sorry, the VA.gov 
website, the User Experience/User Interface (UX/UI) experience. 
What do my veterans, what do our veterans need to do in order 
to course correct if there is an issue?
    Mr. Tellez. Thank you, Congressman, for your question.
    I think right now if they are concerned that they did file 
a claim and they do not see it when they check the status of 
their claim on VA.gov, then they can call. Well, they could 
check VA.gov. They do not see it there, then they could call 
the call center and we will certainly address that question 
there.
    Mr. Luttrell. I have to go back to my veterans and tell 
them the VA possibly made a mistake, so you, the veteran, need 
to reengage instead of the VA reaching out to the veteran and 
saying, hey, we made a mistake and we want to fix this, it was 
not your fault?
    Mr. Tellez. We have done some outreach, sending letters. We 
are sending letters when we take actions on those claims as 
well. That is both for the 526 issue for disability claims and 
for the dependency claims as well. We will send out 
correspondence.
    Mr. Luttrell. Which specific department in the VA is 
handling that issue? Is that you directly?
    Mr. Tellez. It is not me directly, but it is VBA that is 
handling that and for that----
    Mr. Luttrell. It would not be the VBA as a whole. There 
would be a little contingent in there somewhere.
    Mr. Tellez. It is probably a combination of our field 
operations and our policy and oversight division.
    Mr. Luttrell. Who would be leading that? I need a name.
    Mr. Tellez. I can get you a name.
    Mr. Luttrell. I will be looking for it by tomorrow, if you 
do not mind.
    Mr. Tellez. No, I do not mind at all.
    Mr. Luttrell. Okay. Mr. Worthington, back to the IT 
situation, if you will. You stated that there has been a lot of 
progress. I am pretty savvy when it comes to the UX/UI, the 
Internet of Things (IoT) space. Now, what do you mean by that?
    Mr. Worthington. Sure. The website itself every year is 
seeing an increasing amount of usage. For example, this past 
year we have had 64 million times where somebody has signed 
into the website, which is up over 50 percent from the previous 
year. That same platform that we use to build VA.gov has 
enabled us recently to launch the VA flagship mobile app, the 
Health and Benefits mobile app. That is been downloaded 1.8 
million times and has a 4.8 star rating in the Apple App store, 
which is on par with USAA and Bank of America. That is sort of 
what we aspire to do, is to give veterans an experience that 
will match what they are getting in the private sector and we 
feel we are making progress at that goal, although these issues 
obviously are our top priority.
    Mr. Luttrell. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Mr. Rosendale. Thank you very much, Representative 
Luttrell.
    Just for disclosure purposes, I am not a veteran, so I 
appreciate your confidence in the work that I am doing here. I 
want to make sure everybody knows that everything that I do 
here is focused on making sure that we do deliver those 
benefits to the veterans that they have earned. Okay? This is 
not a gift. This is something that they have earned and they 
are supposed to get them.
    As I was sitting here listening to that exchange and about 
people saying I take accountability, I agree with my two 
representative friends over here. Saying that you take 
accountability and seeing the action for it are two 
dramatically different things.
    I saw problems taking place in Fort Harrison Veterans 
Hospital in Helena, Montana, last year and worked with 
Secretary McDonough to have an extensive investigation and 
analysis done. You want me to tell you what accountability is? 
We changed the director. We had the director removed from Fort 
Harrison because she was not conducting the affairs properly. 
She was not a leader. She was allowing things to take place 
that should not have been taking place. Okay? That is 
accountability, gentlemen. That is accountability.
    Mr. Tellez, I am really glad to hear that the 560 veterans 
whose intent to file under the PACT Act that were not received 
actually have been recognized and that has been resolved. They 
have been taken care of. I do want to make sure that each 
impacted veteran that is applying for anything is taken care 
of.
    Will you consider every veteran's appeal timely who was 
unable to file the notice of disagreement (NOD)? When we start 
talking about the disability benefits and things like that, if 
it is not timely, are you going to recognize that?
    Mr. Tellez. Clarifying question, Congressman. Are you 
talking about the NOD issue or the appeal for related to the 
ITF?
    Mr. Rosendale. Quite frankly, any benefit whatsoever. If 
they have filed, okay, and they have filed within the timeframe 
that they were supposed to and they did not have recognition 
given back to them to even tell them that the system did not 
recognize that, are you going to consider all of those as 
timely filings? We have got 94,000 people that have made 
applications and somewhere along the line they were not 
recognized.
    Mr. Tellez. Right. Well, I think the veteran always has a 
right to appeal a thing and we will absolutely consider these 
system errors as we consider that appeal and we adjudicate it. 
Absolutely, we will consider this as one of those factors.
    Mr. Rosendale. Mr. DelBene, you have been making a 
distinction between VA.gov, which you believe is great, and the 
system's interfaces underneath VA.gov, which you acknowledge 
have widespread technical problems. Veterans who are trying to 
apply for benefits and getting error messages obviously are not 
interested in that distinction. They just know there is a 
problem. They do not know whether it is VA.gov or with the 
system that is underneath of it. A problem is a problem to 
them.
    Does not any problem with any system that touches the 
website risk creating these errors?
    Mr. DelBene. I am not 100 percent I understand which 
direction you are heading, but I will say that any error that 
starts from the perspective of VA.gov, regardless of what 
system it descend into, yes, they will think of that as the 
same sort of error. We should not have to have our veterans 
understand the distinction between, for instance, Veterans 
Benefits Management System (VBMS) and VA.gov. I think I am 
agreeing with you.
    Mr. Rosendale. Mr. Worthington, you have been working on a 
lot more of this distinction, it sounds like. Okay? Are you 
parsing out, if you will, where that problem actually is, 
whether it is on VA.gov or whether it is the system underneath 
or whether it is the interface, okay, the connection of the 
two?
    Mr. Worthington. Yes. Obviously for our teams, it matters a 
lot where the specific problem is because we are trying to go 
solve it. For the veterans, to your point, we are not trying to 
explain to them where the system failure is. We just need to 
make a very clear, simple explanation for what has gone wrong 
in any given case, so that they do not have to understand the 
inner workings of the VA.
    Mr. Rosendale. Mr. DelBene, you have clearly known for a 
while that VA.gov and other systems that it touches need a lot 
of work. Either you are just starting to understand how these 
different systems interact and create errors or you have known 
about it and you are just now getting serious about tackling 
it.
    Can you break that down for me? What is going on?
    Mr. DelBene. Since I joined January of last year, I have 
done deep technical dives across the entire set of portfolio of 
the VA applications--over a thousand applications. These issues 
have come up along the way. For instance, we talked about the 
one that happened just last month with the increase in traffic 
that went to the VA.gov website. As the issues identify 
themselves, we are tackling those issues as quickly as humanly 
possible.
    I have also been doing deep dives into the portfolio to try 
to proactively identify those places where there are 
vulnerabilities that could show up that have not yet.
    I think, across the board, to your point, it shows that 
there is a lot of modernization that needs to happen across the 
entire estate that we take care of in OIT as part of the VA.
    Mr. Rosendale. Thank you very much.
    I will now recognize Ranking Member Cherfilus-McCormick for 
another round of questions.
    Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman.
    My question is for Mr. DelBene. What is your plan to ensure 
that the IT system used by blind and low-vision VA employees 
are accessible and support them while they are doing their 
jobs? It is a follow-up question from the section 508 that we 
started on.
    Mr. DelBene. Thank you for the question. It is a good one.
    As I said, there are multiple classes of content, so to 
speak, that blind and visually impaired folks need to be able 
to access. There are web pages, PDFs, and then there are the 
applications themselves. The applications are fairly thorny 
because of the complexity involved, and it is also not as 
objective in how you measure them. You actually have to take 
scenarios through it.
    What we are doing is we are identifying the top most 
important applications that people need to use. We are then 
grading them based on a scale of from A to F as to how good 
they are at the present. Then we are setting criteria of must-
fix issues before the application can get approved.
    We have been doing this against the Electronic Health 
Record Modernization (EHRM) that we are working on with Cerner. 
We are going to tackle that across the entire fleet of 
applications.
    To a point here, we actually recently delayed the launch of 
our new time sheet application just because the 508 compliance 
was not to where we thought it should be. You got to have teeth 
on this as well.
    Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick. What is your requirement for your 
software vendors?
    Mr. DelBene. Well, we need to push that. In a lot of cases, 
as you know, those applications are built by third parties, and 
so we need to set criteria and have established criteria. We 
define must-have scenarios that have to get fixed as part of 
the ship criteria.
    Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick. When will we be able to get those 
criterias that you will have set?
    Mr. DelBene. We can follow up with you. It would probably 
be better as a discussion than actually us kind of giving you a 
textual reply, but, in fact, it is probably a good question for 
the 27th.
    Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick. Okay. My concern is that we are 
not getting any real deadlines, and so, as we are anticipating 
when we will start seeing changes, I have not gotten any set 
goals or deadlines or even requirements in place. Making sure 
we can establish that is imperative, so we are not doing this 
over and over for years to come.
    Mr. DelBene. Yes. I do want to caution you, though, that 
getting to 508 compliance, because of the breadth of the 
portfolio is going to be more of a journey than us being able 
to tell you on such-and-such a date we are fully 508 compliant. 
We can talk to you about our progress, we can talk to you about 
our goals, et cetera, and I kind of welcome that conversation 
with you.
    Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick. Okay. Just as long as we are 
meeting those goals and setting those goals, that is what is 
important. Full compliance might be a stretch, but we should at 
least have points to meet substantial completion. We should 
have midterm points so we can get there as we are forecasting. 
Without those points, we are kind of just moving without a 
target in mind. We need to have those targets so we are not 
looking 10 years later wondering why it took us so much time. 
Those targets are very important.
    My next questions are about readiness. Veterans who 
deployed to combat zones and left the military between 
September 11, 2001, and October 1, 2013, have until 11:59 p.m. 
this Saturday, September 30, to directly enroll in VA 
Healthcare, regardless of whether or not they have applied for 
the disability benefits.
    Mr. DelBene, given the issues experienced with the 
backdated benefits deadline in August, how confident are you 
that the VA is prepared for an increase in applications before 
the healthcare access deadline?
    Mr. DelBene. Thank you for the question.
    We have actually intensively scrubbed all aspects of what 
delivering that service means. Let me pass it over to Charles 
and he can talk to you about the website in particular and the 
backend systems it is connected to.
    Mr. Worthington. We are monitoring very closely the flow 
for what we call it the 10-10EZ, the healthcare enrollment 
form. We have seen a big increase in applications. I was just 
looking this up and saw that in the past 30 days we have 
processed over 30,000 healthcare enrollments on VA.gov. That 
compares to 12,000 in June and around 13,000 in July.
    We are seeing a big increase and so far the systems are 
holding up very well. We are obviously monitoring it very 
intently as we approach that Saturday deadline, but that is 
something we are watching very closely and we will continue to 
monitor until the end of the deadline.
    Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick. So, specifically, your confidence 
level is high?
    Mr. Worthington. At this time, I would say it is high, yes.
    Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick. Thank you so much. I yield back.
    Mr. Rosendale. Thank you, Ranking Member Cherfilus-
McCormick.
    I will now recognize Representative Self.
    Mr. Self. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to go back to the 
56,000 veterans.
    Mr. Tellez, I want to address three different categories of 
veterans that we might see. Are you going to force veterans to 
pay back overpayments?
    Mr. Tellez. Thank you for your question, sir.
    No, we will adjudicate those claims and where we had undue 
debts recovered from them, no.
    Mr. Self. Okay. How about veterans that have been 
underpaid, will you make them whole?
    Mr. Tellez. Yes, yes.
    Mr. Self. Okay. Veterans that have already paid back 
erroneous overpayments?
    Mr. Tellez. We are looking at that, the authority that we 
have to do that, to reclaim that money, absolutely, as a result 
of this defect error.
    Mr. Self. So, you are planning to reclaim it if you have 
the authority?
    Mr. Tellez. I believe so, yes. Oh, reclaim? I think where 
veterans have already paid back some of their debt, I think is 
maybe what I did not hear then----
    Mr. Self. Correct.
    Mr. Tellez [continuing]. then I think what we are looking 
to is who are those veterans and how can we do that? Yes.
    Mr. Self. They have already been forced to pay back their 
overpayments. Okay. What are you going to do with them?
    Mr. Tellez. I think as a result of this error, that is what 
we are looking at to how do we provide that relief back to 
them?
    Mr. Self. How many do you think have done that?
    Mr. Tellez. We are doing that assessment right now of the 
56,000, so I do not have that data for you today.
    Mr. Self. I may have misspoken. We are talking about 
erroneous debts here. Okay? That they have been forced to pay 
back erroneous debts already. How many would that be?
    Mr. Tellez. I do not have that assessment for you yet, but 
we will work on getting that. I know we are working on 
assessing that 56,000 population and I am sure by October be 
able to tell you a little bit more in detail what those 
different populations look like.
    Mr. Self. Okay. We have been talking a lot about process 
here, which kind of frustrates me because I would love to talk 
about results as opposed to just process. Let me give you 
another process that we have been dealing with here in Congress 
and that is the appeals process.
    The Appeals Board, for a long time, has not been able to do 
its job in a timely manner. We have actually put in a bill to 
add two judges to the Appeals Court because the board will not 
act in an expeditious manner. The process that we are 
discussing here gets a little frustrating to me because we 
cannot seem to have results that we are trying to get at here.
    With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield.
    Mr. Rosendale. Thank you very much, Representative Self.
    I recognize Representative Luttrell.
    Mr. Luttrell. Thank you, sir.
    Mr. Tellez, the 32,000 veterans whose claims were lost and 
then found in January, that ring a bell? Where were they found?
    Mr. Tellez. I think that is probably going to have to turn 
that to Charles.
    Mr. Worthington. Yes. So, the----
    Mr. Luttrell. Mr. Worthington.
    Mr. Worthington [continuing]. the specific issue that 
occurred was between VA.gov and the downstream system that 
processes those claims.
    Mr. Luttrell. Can you do me a favor and elaborate what you 
mean on ``downstream,'' please?
    Mr. Worthington. Sure. When a claim is, ultimately, is 
going to be processed by the claims processor using a system 
called VBMS, and there is a couple of interfaces between VA.gov 
and VBMS to get that set up correctly. What we found in these 
cases was that----
    Mr. Luttrell. These----
    Mr. Worthington [continuing]. these 32,000----
    Mr. Luttrell [continuing]. 32,000.
    Mr. Worthington [continuing]. in these cases there was an 
error in the establishment of the claim. It was submitted on 
VA.gov.
    Mr. Luttrell. Same one on all 32,000?
    Mr. Worthington. Similar type of error that led to the 
claim not being accepted by one of those downstream systems. 
The data associated with the claim----
    Mr. Luttrell. Which downstream system did not pick it up? 
If they are similar, say it out loud.
    Mr. Worthington. The exact nature of the errors, there was 
probably a category of them. For an example, there might have 
been a character in one of the fields submitted that was not 
accepted. You know, it had an accent on it.
    Mr. Luttrell. Or a slash and it did not pick it up.
    Mr. Worthington. As an example, right. What we have found, 
though, is that the actual original data is still maintained in 
the VA.gov system, which we have been able to use to recreate 
the full claim and that is what we are now being able to use 
for processing. That original claim did not make it into the 
VBMS system so that it could begin the processing due to these 
technical errors.
    Mr. Luttrell. We have to rework multiple systems in order 
for it to be able to be read by VA.gov?
    Mr. Worthington. What we have now developed in this case is 
basically a backup process. If this type of problem were to 
happen again, rather than take the automated digital path, we 
are going to create a PDF version of the claim as if a veteran 
had mailed it and work it as if it was a paper claim.
    Mr. Luttrell. One person is doing that or the team?
    Mr. Worthington. The team. This system will automatically 
now send the claim into our central mail portal where it would 
get picked up just like any other claim submitted via paper, if 
it were to hit this this error case again, as a backup to the 
automated process.
    Mr. Luttrell. These 32,000 claims are being added on to all 
the other claims that are sitting in that silo, correct?
    Mr. Worthington. I would defer to Ray on that, but, yes, 
they would be added.
    Mr. Luttrell. It is another add-on?
    Mr. Worthington. Added to the queue to be worked, yes.
    Mr. DelBene. Just to be clear there, it is not--the intake 
portal actually has a finite number of things awaiting 
processing. This is not--we are not talking about the large set 
of claims that are in working--being worked. A small set that 
are----
    Mr. Luttrell. This is a particular portion of the--it is a 
totality, correct?
    Mr. Delbene. Right, exactly.
    Mr. Luttrell. So, it is. We need to address this. Yes? That 
sounds like a pretty fair assessment.
    Mr. Tellez. Just to pick up from Charles going to my mail 
portal. We are processing mail in about 6 hours. Should there 
be an error and that paper form is created, it gets inserted 
into the mail portal, we will process that in under 6 hours. 
Then that goes into the normal work queue for National Work 
Queue (NWQ).
    Of that 32,000, we are already working on those right now. 
In fact, we have established about 25,000 of those and of those 
already we have made decisions on, I do not have the number in 
front of me, about 14,000. We are taking action on those now. 
We are reviewing them. From our perspective, these are claims 
that veterans probably have already doubled. The expectation is 
we have touched it once and really at this point we just need 
to make sure that what was previously missed it matches what we 
have and then make an administrative action or we adjudicate 
for the areas that there is differences. We are already working 
those 32,000 claims right now.
    Mr. Luttrell. Mr. Worthington, let us just do the math on 
this. What else are we missing? There is going to be something 
that is going to pop up because of one little character or 
whatever that may be and it is going to be a substantial 
number, if I had to guess, given the amount of veterans that 
the VA has to deal with.
    Are you directly in charge of the oversight of the system 
in order to find these faults?
    Mr. Worthington. Yes, we are looking exactly at this 
category of bug that was sort of tied up in the 526 and the 
dependency claim issue across all of the VA.gov features right 
now to see if there are any other places where we could be 
missing something that could be similar. So far, we have not 
found any large number. Anything that we do find, we are going 
to identify and build both a better process, but also make sure 
that we have not had any similar types of cases where there is 
a claim or a form that has been submitted that should have been 
worked, but was not. We are looking very intently at that right 
now.
    Mr. Luttrell. I will close with this following on Mrs. 
McCormick's statement about Mr. DelBene. The reason a timeline 
and dates makes sense, and it does for us and this is maybe 
another issue I have with the VA, they do not seem to ever want 
to put a timeline, a hard day on what we consider a success. I 
find that frustrating considering everything that we are having 
to deal with with the VA. I am talking out loud or I am not 
talking directly at you per se. Okay?
    There is no accountability if we go swimming past that at 
1,000 miles an hour. That is unfortunate because if you unpack 
this thing, it is a human being we are talking about. That is 
why dates are so important to us. That is why we want to know 
exactly when this is going to happen. Even if you do not make 
it, we got three-quarters of the way there, we fell short, we 
are going to keep going.
    Mr. Chairman, I apologize, I went over. I yield back.
    Mr. Rosendale. Thank you. Thank you very much, 
Representative Luttrell.
    What we are going to do is a third shortened round, 
lightning round I would like to call it. I think several of us 
have a couple of short little questions we would like to wrap 
up with.
    Mr. DelBene, let me ask you about the benefits IT 
modernization plan in the PACT Act. Speaking about 
quantifiable, measurable deadlines and accomplishments, that is 
exactly what I want to get to. You have over $130 million of 
projects to upgrade the VA.gov in the plan. How much of that 
money have you spent so far and what can you show us that has 
been accomplished? What quantifiable, what measured success can 
you share with us?
    Mr. DelBene. In terms of the amount spent, I really should 
get back to you because I need to get with the team and get 
with our central finance organization to find out how much of 
it has been spent.
    The process that we go through, we won in the 701B filing, 
we basically laid out everything that the investment is for. We 
laid out what the actual milestones are in terms of moving from 
the existing architecture to the new architecture. I can 
probably come back to you and say this is exactly where we are 
on the milestones if that would be----
    Mr. Rosendale. That is exactly what I want.
    Mr. DelBene. Sure.
    Mr. Rosendale. I would like to see that spreadsheet, okay, 
that says here is how much money we have spent out of this and 
here is the success rates and here is the marks that we have 
hit to accomplish whatever task that you have laid out for 
those funds.
    Mr. DelBene. Sure, let us take that away to figure out the 
best way to communicate to that so it addresses your questions.
    Mr. Rosendale. Greatly appreciated.
    Representative Self.
    Mr. Self. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    The construction authority was taken away from the VA 
several years ago. Should Congress consider taking IT authority 
away from VA so that you can focus on healthcare? Would that be 
something to streamline VA's focus strictly on the veteran as 
opposed to this very complex IT problem?
    Mr. Delbene. When you say take it away, what did you have 
in mind to do with it?
    Mr. Self. Well, I do not know because the construction 
authority is my example. It was taken away and given to the 
Corps of Engineers because of construction missteps in the past 
by the VA. Taken away from the VA so that some other 
organization would be responsible for IT, so that VA could 
focus on healthcare.
    How do we get VA focused on 100,000 people who have fallen 
through the cracks? How do we focus you? Would that do it?
    Mr. Delbene. I actually think that would be a mistake. The 
best software is built in tight cooperation between the 
stakeholders, the people using the software, and the people 
building the software.
    Mr. Self. Okay. I suspected that would be your answer.
    My second real quick question, I am not an IT guy, so I 
will use the term. All of these things that seem to disappear, 
did you have a cache system or some--were they still there or 
did they disappear into the ethernet, some that we do not know 
about? Can you find everything eventually or are they gone?
    Mr. Worthington. Yes, I could answer that, Representative. 
We have a very good log of all of the benefit forms that were 
submitted on VA.gov which has allowed us to basically 
reconstruct those claims.
    Mr. Self. Even the ones that were not----
    Mr. Worthington. That is correct.
    Mr. Self [continuing]. dealt with?
    Mr. Worthington. In the category of the claims that were 
delayed due to these technical issues, yes, we do have all of 
the data.
    Mr. Self. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Mr. Rosendale. Okay. That seems as we are done. Thank you, 
all the witnesses, and you are excused from the witness table.
    We expect more from VA.gov because in a few years' time it 
will go from a convenience that a minority of the veterans use 
to default option for most of the veterans very, very soon now. 
We have seen this in banking and insurance and so many other 
businesses and industries. Most Americans do not want to walk 
into a building or dial a call center to handle their routine 
transactions. Most folks, I mean, they are accustomed to doing 
it right from their phone, quite frankly. They expect to do 
these things on a website 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They 
do expect the transactions to be accurate and efficient and 
recorded, quite frankly.
    I absolutely agree that VA.gov is the front door of the 
Department of Veterans Affairs. It is the right priority to 
have because veterans need to have confidence in it. The 
committee's focus on this issue is going to continue. We need 
to see what has been accomplished and what is left to do at the 
end of the VA's 90-day review.
    My colleagues and I understand very clearly that the 
systems that process VA benefits have historically been 
neglected. That is why we prioritized upgrading these systems 
in the PACT Act in anticipation of the flood of the additional 
claims that were going to be coming through before anyone at 
the Department ever said a word about the glitches and bugs 
that we have been hearing about here today. The VA must 
demonstrate that the funding Congress is providing for the 
benefits IT modernization plan is being put to good use. Our 
witnesses can expect to be called upon again as they work their 
way through the plan.
    With that, I ask unanimous consent that all members have 5 
legislative days to revise and extend the remarks.
    Oh, excuse me, I invite Ranking Member Cherfilus-McCormick 
to make any closing statements.
    Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I 
appreciate the testimony and answers of our witnesses this 
afternoon. I recognize that no IT solution is perfect. They are 
constantly evolving and changing and that evolution introduces 
risk.
    I appreciate the fact that Assistant Secretary DelBene came 
in person today to discuss the shortcomings with VA.gov. It was 
important for us to hear from the leader accountable for these 
programs about the Department's plan to address past issues and 
mitigate future disturbances to ensure that the VA IT system 
does not prevent veterans from accessing their care and 
benefits that they have very hardly earned.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Mr. Rosendale. Thank you, Ranking Member Cherfilus-
McCormick.
    With that, I ask unanimous consent that all members have 5 
legislative days to revise and extend the remarks and include 
extraneous material. With no objection., so ordered.
    The hearing is adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 4:19 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]     
      
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                         A  P  P  E  N  D  I  X

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                     Prepared Statement of Witness

                              ----------                              


                   Prepared Statement of Kurt DelBene

INTRODUCTION

    Good afternoon, Chairman Rosendale, Ranking Member Cherfilus-
McCormick and distinguished Members of the Subcommittee. Thank you for 
the opportunity to testify today about the Department of Veterans 
Affairs' (VA) VA.gov website. I am accompanied today by Mr. Charles 
Worthington, the Chief Technology Officer of VA and Mr. Ray Tellez, 
Executive Director, Office of Business Integration, Veterans Benefits 
Administration (VBA).

OVERVIEW

    VA is committed to providing exceptional care, services and a 
seamless, unified experience to Veterans. VA's Office of Information 
and Technology (OIT) collaborates with VBA and various VA offices to 
achieve this mission through the delivery of state-of-the-art 
technology, including VA.gov, a modernized website and VA's digital 
front door. Nearly 14 million unique Veterans and others per month use 
VA.gov to access information about the services and benefits provided 
by the Department. In August we had over 19 million unique visits. The 
website is designed with a clear and intuitive navigation menu enabling 
users to quickly find the information they need.
    The VA.gov project is one of the Department's most important 
initiatives, providing for the first time a single, comprehensive 
digital experience that provides Veterans a single online location to 
learn about, apply for, use and manage their VA health care and 
benefits. On VA.gov, Veterans can complete an assortment of actions 
from applying for health care, to updating a mailing address, to 
managing health care appointments, to checking on the status of an 
upcoming benefit payment.
    Since its relaunch in 2018, VA.gov has seen dramatic growth, both 
in terms of usage and in the breadth of services offered on the 
platform. For example:

      Over the past year, VA processed 1.9 million digital 
benefit application form submissions, including health care 
enrollments, disability benefit applications, education benefit 
applications and more. These digital submissions were, up 9.1 percent 
from 2022 and a 95 percent increase from 2019, the first full year the 
platform was launched.

      Veterans viewed their claim status online over 30 million 
times, up over 37 percent from the prior year. And, for the first time 
ever Veterans can view their claim decision letter online instead of 
waiting for it to arrive in the mail--a feature that has already been 
used 3.8 million times since its launch in December 2022.

      Over FY 2023, VA.gov has seen over 700,000 digital 
disability claim submissions (out of 2.3 million total FY 2023 
submissions), which is a 30 percent increase from fiscal year (FY) 2022 
and a 152 percent increase from FY 2020. Online submission account for 
approximately 2928 percent of the total disability claims submission 
(2.4 million) received during FY 2023.

    VA has added numerous features to VA.gov during this period of high 
growth. To name a few: Veterans can now apply online for caregiver 
benefits. They can digitally submit all three types of appeals under 
the new Appeals Modernization Act (higher level reviews, supplemental 
claims, Notices of Disagreement). They can request a debt waiver and 
view their debt and copayment balances. They can view, request and 
schedule health care appointments and check in for those appointments 
on the day of the appointment. And they can customize their digital 
notification preferences at a granular level.
    Additionally, in 2021 VA launched the Health and Benefits flagship 
iPhone and Android mobile app, a companion product to VA.gov that 
leverages the same backend infrastructure to provide Veterans an easy-
to-use personalized experience in their pocket. This product has been 
one of VA's most successful digital experiences, with over 1.8 million 
downloads, 800,000 monthly users and a 4.8-star rating in the Apple app 
store (with over 95,000 ratings)--on par with our peers like USAA, Bank 
of America and even Amazon.

CHALLENGES

    Integrating the various legacy systems into VA.gov has not come 
without challenges. We proactively notified you on September 5, 2023, 
that VA recently uncovered several technological issues, which we are 
working hard to address. Broadly, there have been the following two 
types of errors:
    First are issues that prevent some Veterans from accessing some 
part of VA.gov's functionality. One such error briefly prevented some 
Veterans from completing a disability claim application during the 
high-traffic period leading up to the August submission deadline for 
the Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring our Promise to Address 
Comprehensive Toxics Act of 2022 (PACT Act) while another prevented 
some Veterans from accessing the online ``Notice of Disagreement'' 
appeal form due to a software bug. Both issues have been resolved. All 
Veteran who submitted a claim or intent to file for PACT Act benefits 
received an outreach letter on August 14, 2023, assuring them that 
despite the error message, VA received their online submission. The 
Board of Veterans' Appeals has a complete list of Veterans potentially 
impacted by the Notice of Disagreement error, so we can ensure no one 
loses out on a potential benefit due to one of these errors. All 
Veterans impacted by these issues received an outreach letter on August 
14, 2023, assuring them that despite the error message, VA received 
their online submission.
    Second are issues that resulted in delays in processing some 
disability compensation and dependent claims submitted on VA.gov. In 
the case of the disability compensation claim submission issue, 
approximately 32,000 claims submitted on VA.gov were not appropriately 
created in the claims processing system, resulting in potential delays. 
VA has completed 12,490 claim reviews of these cases and is working 
urgently to review the remaining claims. In the case of the dependency 
claim issue, VA has determined 45,903 claims submitted on VA.gov since 
2011 may have had a similar issue. VA is expeditiously reviewing these 
dependency claims, which may affect the total number of claimants 
impacted by this error. VA expects to validate the number of impacted 
Veterans by the end of October 2023. The resolution of potentially 
impacted dependency claims will depend on the volume of reviews needed.
    VA remains committed that all underpaid Veterans will receive the 
full backdated benefits they deserve, and that no Veterans are 
negatively impacted by our error. These reviews could result in either 
no action (in cases where VA has already updated the dependency status) 
or adjustments to monthly benefits payments. VA is also determining the 
number of Veterans who may have an impacted VA.gov submission, but has 
already repaid a debt to VA. These Veteran records will be reviewed to 
determine if any undue debt was recovered and ensure any debts related 
to VA.gov submission delays are appropriately adjusted.
    I want to be clear that we view these problems as unacceptable, and 
we at VA deeply apologize to all impacted Veterans. We are working hard 
to ensure no Veteran is negatively impacted due to one of these 
technical issues, by ensuring Veterans receive effective dates that 
respect their original submission timeline and forgiving any 
overpayment debts that may have been created due to VA's technical 
mistakes.

FUTURE STATE

    While these issues have impacted only a small percentage of total 
VA.gov users and transactions, it is unacceptable for even one Veteran 
to be delayed due to technological issues. Moving forward, the 
Department is taking immediate steps to prevent issues like this from 
happening in the future--and to ensure that when issues do arise, they 
are identified and fixed quickly. These steps include the following:

      Conducting a full review of all VA.gov processing 
systems. VA will look at every place where Veterans submit 
applications, claims, or other forms to ensure that the process is 
working quickly and efficiently--and that no Veterans are being delayed 
as a result of technological errors.

      Creating new system functionality to detect and alert OIT 
and VBA team members and leadership when submissions are not processed 
correctly, so that these submissions can be addressed appropriately. 
Submissions that experienced errors will be routed to be processed 
manually with high priority, and OIT will trigger an analysis as to the 
cause of the error.

      Investing in modernizing our claims processing 
infrastructure to ensure a seamless, error-free experience for 
Veterans, their families, caregivers and survivors on VA.gov.

    VA will resolve these issues, prevent them from happening in the 
future, address them more quickly when needed and--most importantly--
make sure that all impacted Veterans get the benefits and services that 
they deserve as quickly as possible.

CONCLUSION

    Chairman Rosendale, Ranking Member Cherfilus-McCormick and Members 
of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you 
today. As I mentioned, VA.gov is one of the Department's most important 
initiatives and we have made a great deal of progress amid the 
tremendous growth in capability and capacity. I look forward to 
continuing working with this Subcommittee and to address our greatest 
priorities and the challenges we face in our digital transformation. We 
value your continued commitment and support for our Veterans.
    This concludes my testimony, and I look forward to answering your 
questions.

                                 [all]