[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
EXAMINING VA.GOV
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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
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via http://govinfo.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
54-154 WASHINGTON : 2024
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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
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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
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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.
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