[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
REEXAMINING VA.ORG
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON TECHNOLOGY MODERNIZATION
of the
COMMITTEE ON VETERANS' AFFAIRS
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MONDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2023
__________
Serial No. 118-42
__________
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
54-513 WASHINGTON : 2026
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
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of converting between various electronic formats may introduce
unintentional errors or omissions. Such occurrences are inherent in the
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C O N T E N T S
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MONDAY, DECEMBER 4, 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................................. 3
Accompanied by:
Mr. Charles Worthington, Chief Technology Officer, Office of
Information & Technology, U.S. Department of Veterans
Affairs
Mr. Ray Tellez, Executive Director, Office of Business
Integration, Veterans Benefits Administration, U.S.
Department of Veterans Affairs
Mr. Paul Shute, 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.................... 23
REEXAMINING VA.ORG
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MONDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2023
U.S. House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Technology Modernization,
Committee on Veterans' Affairs,
Washington, D.C.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:57 p.m., in
room 360, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Matt Rosendale
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Rosendale, Self, and Cherfilus-
McCormick.
OPENING STATEMENT OF MATTHEW M. ROSENDALE, CHAIRMAN
Mr. Rosendale. Good afternoon. The subcommittee will come
to order.
This is our second hearing on the VA.gov bugs and the
struggles they have created for veterans to access their
benefits.
I would like to welcome our witnesses back to the
discussion on these issues.
The number of veterans affected now exceeds 120,000.
To recap, about 32,000 veterans submitted their disability
compensation claims through the website, but as our witnesses
explained in September, the claims were never established in
the system that processes them.
This had been happening since 2018.
In addition, roughly 81,000 veteran and family members'
requests to add or remove dependents on VA.gov and its
predecessor system were not processed, causing them to be
overpaid or underpaid.
This has been happening all the way back to 2011.
On top of that, other veterans were unable to access the
notice of disagreement form on VA.gov to appeal denials of
their claims.
This went on for about 5 weeks before being discovered.
I understand that our witnesses have an update on the
number of veterans who encountered that problem.
Mistakes are bound to happen. It is unacceptable that some
of these errors persisted for years before anyone discovered
them.
In the last hearing I urged our witnesses to be more
proactive in contacting the veterans and offering them help,
and I would like an update on that.
Many of these veterans and survivors depend on their VA
benefits for most or all of their income.
They need to hear from the VA much more quickly.
We all need to be confident that errors in the VA.gov and
other systems will never again be allowed to compound
undetected and impact so many people.
To that end, I will be introducing the VA Watching Over
Electronic Benefits Act.
The VA now has a watchtower to monitor the website, and
this legislation will make sure that it performs as intended.
I would now like to turn to another problem that our
veterans are facing.
In early November, VA informed the committee that it has
been overpaying pensions to at least 9,900 veterans because of
inaccurate data from the Social Security Administration and a
faulty process for veterans to self-report their income.
This has been going on since 2011, and it may impact as
many as 40,000 veterans.
I appreciate our witnesses explaining the situation to the
committee staff last week but there are still quite a few
outstanding questions.
When did VA leaders first realize that the data problems
were creating pension overpayments?
I understand there is a debt collection moratorium, but how
has that been communicated to all the veterans, and how exactly
does it work?
When are the debts going to be erased?
Why has the VA still not determined the status of the other
30,000 veterans who may be affected?
These technical issues each affected veterans' benefits in
different ways.
In each case, we expect the VA to put aside what is
convenient for the bureaucracy and move faster.
With that, I yield to Ranking Member Cherfilus-McCormick
for her opening statement. Thank you.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SHEILA CHERFILUS-MCCORMICK, RANKING MEMBER
Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you so much to our witnesses for being here today and
testifying.
It has now been 2 months since we met to discuss issues
with VA.gov. I look forward to today's conversation and hearing
from witnesses how VA is progressing in fixing the problem with
the Information Technology (IT) systems that allowed veterans
to fall through the cracks.
Since the hearing in September, we have learned that VA
shut down an online form that veterans use to file pension
claims. I have been told that the form had not been updated
since 2018 and no longer matched the paper form used by VA
today. I have concerns that the form went so long without being
updated and I am curious what VA is doing to evaluate other
electronic forms that may be out of date.
I look forward to the conversation today. Thank you, and I
yield back.
Mr. Rosendale. Thank you, Ranking Member Cherfilus-
McCormick.
I will now introduce the Department of Veterans Affairs
witnesses on our first and only panel today.
First, we have Assistant Secretary for Information and
Technology, Kurt DelBene. Thank you for coming in again today.
We also have Chief Technology Officer, Charles Worthington.
Again, thank you again for coming in.
From the Veterans Benefits Administration we have Mr. Ray
Tellez. Good to see you again. Executive Director of the Office
of Business Integration.
Joining him is Mr. Paul Shute, the Assistant Deputy Under
Secretary for the Office of Automated Benefits Delivery. Thank
you again.
I ask the witnesses to please stand and raise your right
hands.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Rosendale. Thank you so much. Let the record reflect
that all 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 distinguished members of the
subcommittee.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify today about the
Department of Veterans Affairs VA.gov website.
I am accompanied today by Mr. Paul Shute, the Assistant
Deputy Under Secretary Office of Automated Benefits Delivery
(VBA); Mr. Raymond Tellez, the Executive Director of the Office
of Business Integration at Veterans Benefits Administration
(VBA); and Mr. Charles Worthington, Chief Technology Officer in
the Office of Information Technology.
VA is committed to providing veterans with a seamless
digital experience they have come to expect in their consumer
lives, and VA.gov's platform strives to be that digital front
door.
Each month, nearly 14,000,000 unique veterans and users
access VA.gov to learn about, apply for, and manage their VA
benefits and healthcare.
As an update to our September hearing, the department would
like to share our progress on the recent VA.gov issues.
With respect to the disability claim submission errors, as
you will recall, we previously identified approximately 32,000
claims that were not correctly established due to a technical
issue.
Currently, VA has established 25,257 of those disability
claims and submitted them, and sent outreach letters to
impacted veterans. As of November 28, 89.4 percent of the
established disability claims were decided. The remaining
identified claims will be established in December of this year.
With respect to the dependency submission claims errors, VA
previously identified 45,903 veterans who filed a request to
update their dependency status and did not have it successfully
processed. VA completed analysis and identified approximately
81,000 veterans who filed and did not have their dependency
submissions successfully processed. As of November 28, the VA
established 70,406 dependency reviews and has completed 37.5
percent with a decision notice to veterans. The remaining
10,975 dependency claims are targeted to be established in
December.
With respect to the The Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson
Honoring our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act
Intent to File Issue (ITF), with record high claim submissions,
the backend of VA.gov's system had an abnormal increase in time
out errors where VA.gov was unable to process a veteran's
intent to file. VA resolved this issue in September and
contacted all affected veterans that their ITF was received.
The department identified 429 ITF submissions needing
establishment and these were processed in September.
Finally, with respect to the Notice of Disagreement Issue,
in September, VA identified a technical issue on VA.gov by
noting a drop of about 900 appeals from the normal VA.gov
submission volume. VA investigated the issue and quickly
deployed a fix--3,152 veterans visiting the site may have been
impacted by the inability to load the webpage that is part of
VA.gov's Notice of Disagreement form. VA will contact the
impacted veterans to ensure that they are able to successfully
submit their appeal without any impact to their appeal date.
To identify any potential issues with VA.gov, VA's Office
of Information Technology implemented a Code Yellow process to
ensure more accurate monitoring. Code Yellow includes
monitoring the health of the most important applications and
features of VA.gov and making these monitors accessible in a
single place.
Additionally, Code Yellow ensures a government employee
knows about any significant issues within 24 hours. So far, 80
percent of VA.gov's most important features are monitored, and
VA will complete automatic monitoring of the top features by
the end of Quarter 1 of Fiscal Year 2024.
Finally, unrelated to previous VA.gov issues, I would like
to address the recent notifications concerning the VA.gov
pension application interactive form being temporarily
unavailable from November 8, 2023, to January 31, 2024.
Leveraging PACT Act funding, VA is updating the interactive
form so it matches the current paper version of the form.
Veterans, their families, and accredited representatives are
still able to download the current pension application form and
submit it using VA QuickSubmit on AccessVA.
Chairman Rosendale, Ranking Member Cherfilus-McCormick, and
members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to
appear before you today. As previously mentioned, VA.gov is the
digital front door for veterans, and veterans need to have
confidence their benefits and services are available, accurate,
and secure.
I look forward to working with the subcommittee to address
our greatest priorities and challenges that we face in our
digital transformation.
This concludes my testimony, and I look forward to any
questions you may have.
[The Prepared Statement Of Kurt DelBene Appears In The
Appendix]
Mr. Rosendale. Thank you very much, Mr. DelBene.
The written statement of Mr. DelBene will be entered into
the hearing record.
We will now proceed with questioning. I recognize myself
for 5 minutes.
I will begin with you, Mr. Tellez.
Mr. Tellez, I would like to return to the 32,000 veterans
whose disability compensation claims submitted to VA.gov were
not established in the system. Why are you only notifying the
veterans as you process their claims? Why have we waited so
long to provide the ones who have not been notified with the
others with any information whatsoever?
Mr. Tellez. Thank you, Congressman, for your question.
I believe we are notifying them at the time of the claim's
establishment because that is the time that we are taking an
action on their claim. It not only updates the veteran of the
action but explains why we are taking that action for them.
Mr. Rosendale. Why would we not give information to the
veterans whose claims have not been recognized at all and at
least let them know that they have not been recognized? There
are a lot of veterans out there that are completely oblivious,
okay, to the fact that they have not even been recognized.
Their claim has not even been recognized yet. Why are we not
sending some kind of notification out to all of them?
Mr. Tellez. Thank you, Congressman. I will take the action
for our communications team to see how we could use social
media and other avenues so organizations continue to spread
that message on that issue.
Mr. Rosendale. All right. They are walking through thinking
they have been recognized into the system. Do you see where my
concern is? They do not even know that there is a problem.
Mr. Tellez. I do. Thank you, Congressman. I would just like
to remind folks that if they have a question or concern they
can call VBA's National Call Center, 1-800-827-1000, Monday
through Friday, 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Eastern Time if they do have
questions while we continue to socialize some of the challenges
that we have had with the VA.gov.
Mr. Rosendale. Okay. Well, again, ignorance may be bliss.
That is a saying. When you are trying to get a benefit, okay,
and apply for it and you have applied for it and you do not
know that it has not been recognized by the system then these
folks are not even aware that they have a problem. As you give
an 800 number out there to folks that are not even aware of the
fact that there is a problem, why would they even bother to
call? How and when do you intend to notify the remaining
veterans and process their claims?
Mr. Tellez. Thank you, Congressman.
We have another automated batch process scheduled for this
month for the remaining veterans who had submitted claims. We
will notify those remaining veterans this month when we put
those claims under control in Veterans Benefits Management
System (VBMS).
Mr. Rosendale. Okay. How do you decide what order and
processes, disability compensation claims it is going to be in?
Okay? Do we have some kind of a priority checklist from
veterans that are either impacted by income or is it by
chronological date or is it by--what matrix are you using to
make a determination about when you contact people?
Mr. Tellez. Thank you, Congressman. I will ask Mr. Shute if
he can respond to that, please.
Mr. Rosendale. Very good.
Mr. Shute. We do not have a prioritized list in terms of
income or other demographic factors. What we did is we looked
at the population of veterans who were impacted by the 526
application issue in VA.gov. Which claims we could get
established most quickly so we can start working those claims,
get those veterans a decision to make them whole. As Ray said,
we have about 7,000 veterans left to establish and process
their claims but there is no order of prioritization in terms
of the factors that you mentioned.
Mr. Rosendale. Someone who has a more severe disability who
might be more reliant upon that income is not going to get any
kind of preferential treatment to someone who might be just
literally subsidizing their lifestyle a bit?
Mr. Shute. Once the claim is established we continue to
follow the protocols that we have for prioritizing claims for
certain populations of veterans--terminally ill, homeless,
things of that nature. Once the claim is----
Mr. Rosendale. I understand once the claims is established.
The problem is going out and actually establishing the claims
for the people who have tried to. Are you understanding the
question I am asking? Okay. They think that they are already in
process and they are not. What I am trying to do is determine
exactly what criteria are you using to get a hold of these
people? If there is not any sense of urgency or priority given
to anyone, which it sounds like what you are doing. You are
just sort of, as a matter of fact, quite the contrary. You
said, in your words, that you are trying to utilize the easiest
cases possible to process faster?
Mr. Shute. We are working to establish the claims that we
can decide as quickly as possible. Those are the claims that
get established first. Correct.
Mr. Rosendale. Okay. Rather than run over we are going to
have a couple of rounds here. I am going to go ahead and
recognize Representative Cherfilus-McCormick for 5 minutes for
questioning.
Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Under Secretary DelBene, it seems that you have been left
holding the bag. Many of these IT issues have gone undiscovered
for years through multiple administrations and countless Chief
Information Officers (CIOs). You just happen to be there, the
one in the seat when we have found them and are left to answer
all the hard questions.
I thank you for your efforts to get VA's IT system up to
the standard that we expect and that veterans deserve.
I would like to spend my time getting some updates on the
issues we discussed in September. At our last hearing on
VA.gov, we discussed the approximately 45,000 veterans who
attempted to update their beneficiaries' information failed.
When did the issue first start and how did we identify it?
Mr. DelBene. Thank you for your question. Actually, I think
I would pass that question to Paul who can answer it more
completely.
Mr. Shute. We first discovered the issue in August 2021. At
that time we found a defect between the integration between our
VA.gov and VBMS systems. At that time we had delivered a
capability to generate a report any time that issue was
encountered. Our Office of Information Technology team could
pass a report basically to VBA so that we could manually
establish and work those claims.
Now, it was not until January 2023 that we learned from our
National Call Center that they were getting an increased volume
of calls from veterans who had filed a dependency claim on
VA.gov and did not receive a decision. At that point in time we
stood up an integrated project team to really delve in and see
if there were other issues that we had not accounted for and
that is what led to the population of 45,000 veterans that we
reported at the last hearing.
Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick. Has the number of veterans
identified changed since our last hearing? What is the status
of those veterans' beneficiaries status that changed?
Mr. Shute. As part of the review, we have identified any
potentially affected veteran and we have now identified a
population of 81,000 veterans who may have been impacted by
this issue. Now, we are confident that not all 81,000 were
impacted but we want to conduct a review of each and every one
of those claims to make sure that we are able to make those
veterans whole.
Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick. When do you expect that all the
beneficiary status updates will have been completed?
Mr. Shute. To date, we have established 70,000 of that
81,000 veteran population and 45 percent of them have been
completed so far. We are planning to establish the remaining
11,000 claims later this month.
Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick. Okay. Thank you.
Also, during that hearing we discussed the approximately
32,000 veterans who attempted to file for disability
compensation were not correctly established. When did this
issue first start and when did you identify it?
Mr. Shute. We first identified this issue in November 2022.
At that time it was impacting around 75,000 claims per week
according to our projections. The issue dated back to 2018. To
clarify, 75 cases per week is what we are anticipating the
impact to be.
That month we determined there were around 32,000 veterans
that were impacted by this issue and we began working on a
remediation plan.
Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick. Has the number of veterans
identified changed since our last hearing? What is the status
of those veteran claims?
Mr. Shute. The number has not changed. To date we have been
able to establish 25,000 of those claims and 90 percent of them
have been completed. We are planning to establish the remaining
7,000 later this month.
Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick. Well, thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Rosendale. Thank you very much Ranking Member
Cherfilus-McCormick.
I will now recognize my good friend from Texas,
Representative Self.
Mr. Self. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
A lot of process as normal we hear in your briefing
packets. A lot of process. Who wants to answer this question:
What is the financial impact, potential financial impact on the
well-being of individual veterans for the disability
compensation claims and pension payments errors? Who wants to
answer that? What is the potential impact on individual
veterans?
Then once we get the individual veterans, what is the
estimate? What I am asking is what do you think on each
veteran, what is a reasonable guess at how much they owe? Then
I want to know what you think the figure is VA wide. Individual
veterans and then VA wide, what is your liability?
Mr. Tellez. Thank you, Congressman, for your question.
In terms of the first part, the financial impact, I think
it is To Be Determined (TBD) because we are still reviewing
those claims. One of the things that we are working from is no
harm to the veteran. As we are looking at these claims, where
there may be a debt created as a result of this system error
those are the things that we can mitigate through our normal
claims processing. We have got rules and authorities to handle
that. Even with the pension overpayment that Congressman
Rosendale spoke of earlier we have authorities in there to
address that, too, and we are working that internally.
I have to take your questions two and three back because I
do not know that we know enough information to be able to
answer it here.
Mr. Self. Let me give you just back of the envelope
figures. Okay? There are some variables here. If we use a
pension amount of $2,000, overpayment amount 10 percent, 5
percent, and you work with those figures, you are talking
about, depending on whether you are talking about the 10,000
veterans or you are talking about the 40,000 veterans and I
have got it, potentially hundreds of millions of dollars that
veterans owe the VA. Is that reasonable?
Mr. Tellez. Congressman, I am not prepared to address that.
We were not prepared to answer the questions on payment. They
were not in the invite letter but we are happy to take that
question back for you and get you a response or a briefing for
you and your staff.
Mr. Self. Well, I suspect that you need to know that answer
because this is a direct liability that the veterans have to
the VA when you are addressing how you are going to handle it.
My second question is I still see that you have not
contacted some of the veterans depending on the issue here.
This is serious business for the individual veterans and I want
to know why you have not contacted every single veteran. This
is, I think you are using Code Yellow. Why is this not a Code
Red, because this direct impacts our veterans. Do you even have
a Code Red?
Mr. DelBene. Actually, I would say with that in respect in
particular, if a system is down that is probably the closest
thing to a Code Red and our goal is to get that system back up
as soon as possible. I triage with the rest of our team every
single issue that happens in the entire VA infrastructure every
day at 8 a.m., and we actually measure our time to recovery on
our major systems each and every month. We do a monthly
operations review to make sure that anything that you would
probably consider a code red gets addressed super quickly.
Mr. Self. I am not really interested in the Code Red. I am
talking about the veterans. I am more interested in the
individual veterans being contacted that they have a problem.
Mr. DelBene. I will pass it to Paul and to Ray in a moment,
but I think the one thing that is the guiding principle is once
we have established for a group that is similar in an issue
like that there is a claim that appears to be valid, we
establish those as quickly as we can. Once we have established
them we, communicate to that veteran. This whole notion that a
veteran would go not knowing whether they have a claim
outstanding or not, I do not think that is usually the case.
The moment we know that there is a class of folks that we
should communicate to, we always strive to communicate to them
as quickly as we can.
Mr. Self. Okay. You used the term ``as quickly as
possible.'' What is the standard for ``quickly as possibly''?
Mr. DelBene. I would think it is situation dependent but
let me pass to Ray or to Paul. Do you have any thoughts there?
Mr. Self. I have a standard in my office. When somebody
contacts us I have a standard by which we answer.
Mr. DelBene. Sure.
Mr. Self. What is your standard? Once you have identified--
because I assume you are identifying new errors all the time.
What is your standard for contacting the veteran? I do not want
to talk process. I want to talk how you are treating our
veterans. What is the standard for ``as quickly as possible''?
There has got to be a standard here, folks. There has got to be
a function.
Mr. Shute. I think the standard that we are all working
toward now is immediate notification of not only the affected
veterans but in key stakeholders and partners like yourself and
the Veterans Service Organization (VSO) community.
Mr. Self. I would like to know what the objective standard
is. Mr. Chairman, I am out of time. I yield back.
Mr. Rosendale. Thank you very much.
Quite frankly, we have just heard from you two
contradictory statements, Mr. DelBene. That you want to have
immediate notification. As soon as you find that there is a
problem that you want to make sure that the veterans are
notified and we know, and you know, of information for a year's
time now where they have not had their information recognized
by the Veterans Administration because of failures within the
software programs and you have not notified them. How in the
world are you going to sit there and say immediate notification
when you have got thousands of veterans who have applied for
benefits and have not been notified that their form, that their
application has not even been recognized by the VA yet? That is
not immediate in anybody's book.
Mr. Worthington, let us talk about the notice of
disagreement issue, and not the one that I have with you right
now.
We have heard several different numbers of veterans
impacted who may or may not have been able to appeal denials of
their claims. Now you are telling us it was 3,152. Do you know
who these veterans are? Have you determined whether they were
able to file notice of disagreement using a different method?
Mr. Worthington. Thank you for the question.
The notice of disagreement impacted the ability of we
believe 3,100 veterans to load the form. We do not know for
sure if the veteran would have intended to submit the form or
not. This would have appeared to them as just an error loading
the webpage. We do have a record, however, of who those
individual veterans are, and I believe the board is planning to
reach out to those veterans to ensure that they have been able
to apply for an appeal if, in fact, that was their intention.
If so, to be able to maintain the effective date of the appeal
dating back to that error.
Mr. Rosendale. When did you discover the problem?
Mr. Worthington. I believe this was discovered in August of
this year and fixed a few days after that.
Mr. Rosendale. Okay. We are still trying to notify these
veterans.
Mr. Shute, was that immediately, August, they found out,
they discovered in August? Would you call that immediate
notification of those veterans? Here it is December the--what
is today? The 4th. That is not immediate in my book. Okay?
Mr. Worthington, when are you going to contact the veterans
who have not filed a notice of disagreement that you have
identified that tried to?
Mr. Worthington. I will have to get back to you with the
specific plans. I believe the board and Office of Information
Technology (OIT) are working on that for early next year.
Mr. Rosendale. Mr. DelBene, I would like to quickly turn to
the 56,000 dependent changes that were not processed. I
understand this number has risen now to 81,000. How many of
these requests have you processed now and how many of these
veterans or dependents have already passed away before the
results were even processed?
Mr. DelBene. If I may, I think Mr. Shute is probably the
best person to answer that question. It is in his domain.
Mr. Shute. Of the 70,000 claims that we have established to
date, we have completed 45 percent of those. In terms of the
result of the claim decisions, we do not have that information
available today but I would be more than happy to provide that
to you in the coming days.
Mr. Rosendale. What I am trying to discover is obviously,
when the claimant has passed away while they were in process,
not only did they not get the benefit of this but it certainly
complicates the beneficiary thereafter of any benefit that they
are going to serve as well.
The long and short of it is--where is my calculator? Okay.
We have got 31,500 of the 81,000 that have been processed. That
is about what I have got. You have got 70,000 of the 81,000,
and you have got 45 percent of the 70,000. 31,500 have been
processed. That is a fancy way of saying 31,500. We have still
got a lot of people, again, out there that have not been
processed, notified.
Mr. Worthington, I have some questions about VA.gov
watchtower. If I understand correctly, it focuses on monitoring
transaction volumes to detect the anomalies. Spikes volume or
valleys in the volume. Why not focus on detecting the
processing errors themselves?
Mr. Worthington. Yes, that is a great question. It does
include both volume but also error rates and other key factors
that would indicate the health of a specific feature. The
intention would be to summarize what you are describing.
Mr. Rosendale. Now, everyone continues to speak about,
again, the anomalies and the peaks and valleys in activity and
that is what you are using as the flag, if you will, to
identify that may be something is going wrong. Are you telling
me the software does have the ability to identify when there is
a problem in the information that is either being received or
delivered?
Mr. Worthington. Yes, we are additionally looking at error
rates in the transactions. Volume would be one indicator but
also error rates and things like latency, how long did the
request take, are other factors that are going into the
watchtower.
Mr. Rosendale. Okay. I am going to yield to Ranking Member
Cherfilus-McCormick for additional questions.
Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
My next question is for Mr. DelBene or any one of the
witnesses who can answer it.
We saw an article from a Florida man, a veteran, actually,
who received a notification that he was in debt to the VA for
more than $100,000 related to the issues with the income
verification. Naturally, that created a lot of anxiety with our
veterans wondering if they, too, owe money. If they would be in
that situation. I wanted to talk to some of the assurances that
we may provide for some of our vets who are in this situation
or may be later on. Related to the pension program issue, I
understand that the VA intends to use all of its authorities
available to forgive any debts occurred by veterans; is that
correct?
Mr. DelBene. Let me pass that one to Mr. Shute who is the
domain expert there.
Mr. Shute. That is correct. We are looking to exercise the
authorities available to us under the Cleland-Dole Act which
would allow us to prevent debt from occurring in those
situations. While we are working to codify that into regulation
we have some draft policies in place that are being reviewed by
the Secretary right now and those decisions should be coming
out soon.
Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick. Just to clarify, could you expand
on that for some of our veterans who might be watching who
might be anxious? A lot of the veterans in my district became
anxious. I want to make sure that is clear for them that we
have a reassurance.
Mr. Shute. Yes. The Cleland-Dole Act I believe in section
252 ensures or prohibits VA from creating a debt for veterans
when it is an action that is due on part of the VA and delay in
the processing time. That is really the authority that we are
using in this situation to not only put those debts on hold
while we put that interim policy in place but to ensure that no
future debts are a result of issues like this.
Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick. For further clarification, is
there a population of veterans that you do not have sufficient
authority to forgive?
Mr. Shute. Not that I am aware of. However, due to the
complexity of some of the policy components I would love to
work with you and your staff and make sure that we bring some
policy experts from our team who can speak to this topic more
intelligently than I can.
Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick. Also, I wanted to ask because some
people are wondering how does this even occur? How have these
veterans acquired such large debts?
Mr. Shute. So I think to start it is helpful to understand
the program that we are talking about here. So the Veteran
Pension Program provides monthly benefits to veterans based on
factors like age and disability and also income and net worth.
Veterans are asked to self-report the income and net worth as
part of their application process and as part of an annual
validation. We had computer matching agreements with the Social
Security Administration to be able to validate that the self-
reported income was correct and the computer matching that was
in place in 2011 was sending data that we could not effectively
rely on. That is when we moved away from using that computer
match and relied exclusively on the self-reported data. Those
issues have now been resolved with the computer matching
program but for veterans who had self-reported income that was
different than the computer match between that period of time,
2011 till the present time, a debt could have occurred in those
instances.
Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick. The issue first started in 2011;
is that correct?
Mr. Shute. That is correct.
Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick. If a vet received a debt letter
how should they follow up?
Mr. Shute. Right now we put all the debt notification and
debt collections on hold while we work to exercise the
authorities available to us under the Cleland-Dole Act.
Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick. Thank you. I yield back, Mr.
Chairman.
Mr. Rosendale. Thank you, Ranking Member Cherfilus-
McCormick.
I now recognize Ranking Member, excuse me, Representative
Self from Texas.
Mr. Self. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Do you think that watchtower is quality control (QC)?
Mr. Worthington. Yes. I would say that we are designing it
so that we have more confidence in the specific health of any
given feature at any given time because VA.gov is such an
expansive product with so many aspects. This would give us a
way to know more proactively if there is an issue happening,
impacting one of those features.
Mr. Self. Now, I disagree with you because what you said is
you are monitoring the health of your functions. That is what I
disagree with because everything we hear again is process here.
I hear very little about the veterans. I am talking about the
quality of control that should be exercised in the
determinations, and we have had other briefings about the
appeals board and all of that. This is my problem. We are
talking about AccessVA here. Why can the live forms not keep up
with the paper forms? It looks to me like it would be harder to
get a new paper form approved than it would be to recode a live
form on VA.gov as opposed to AccessVA. Why can they not keep
up? Why do you have to take that function down and have people
use AccessVA? Can anyone answer that?
Mr. DelBene. If I may, the first thing I would like to
address is I think the difference between what Mr. Worthington,
where his head was at and your point around QC is it is a
portion of QC. It is a full process from ingestion all the way
to processing of those appeals. I think watchtower is QC in
that front end.
The other thing that was not mentioned, which I think is
really important, is we have changed the error handling so that
everything that does not get processed by the actual software
goes into the in mail or inbound mail for people to process
manually. I think that is that quality control that makes sure
everything gets processed.
Then there is a separate question about a discussion about
whether the handling of the application once it has actually
been submitted is quality controlled and we can have a
discussion about that, too. I just wanted to make a distinction
there.
In terms of the forms, every time there is a form that is
changed, the computer version of it gets onto a feature list
that gets prioritized by us and by the VBA to decide what
features will be implemented in what order. I think that is a
very back and forth process. Lots of debate goes on of what is
more important. Adding more capability to VA.gov so that more
people can apply online versus changing the particular form. I
think in this particular case, VBA had found a way around it so
that they could actually still process these forms by reaching
out to the veteran and that weighs into that kind of
prioritization scheme.
Mr. Self. Okay. I will not pursue that. Let us talk about
your authorities. When you talk about pensions, typically these
are low-income and elderly veterans; correct? As I read the
authority to delay collection, when I read the authority, the
secretary can delay if it is likely to cause repayment of such
overpayment makes it more difficult for the individual, likely
to cause an unpaid debt to be referred to the Treasury Offset
program or not in the best interest of the individual. I think
that could cover almost everyone in this program because we are
talking about low-income and elderly veterans. Is that a fair
statement?
The follow-on question I will give you before you answer,
do you simply delay or do you do any expungement?
Mr. Worthington. Let me pass that one to Mr. Shute to
respond.
Mr. Shute. Yes. Unfortunately, I am only able to speak to
the technical components of that. Again, some of our policy
experts who understand the nuances of that law I would love to
take some of those questions back and make sure we can get you
a thorough response.
Mr. Self. Okay. Do you do expungement?
Mr. Shute. I am not aware of any policies related to
expungement.
Mr. Self. We have got potentially hundreds of millions of
dollars that the veterans of this nation owe the VA. Many of
them do not know it and you can delay it but not expunge it.
That is something we probably ought to make clear to our
veterans. If you have gotten one of these letters or if you are
going to get one of these letters I think we need to make that
clear to our veterans.
With that I yield back.
Mr. Rosendale. Thank you very much.
Mr. Worthington, I am going to get back to the watchtower
process. Do you think it would be an unreasonable expectation
to prevent the errors in the situations we have been
discussing?
Mr. Worthington. No. I think that is exactly our goal is to
reduce the chance of errors like this happening and certainly
not for as long as they happened in this case. We view that as
unacceptable and this program I think will give us more
confidence that that is not occurring as we try to get all of
the features monitored.
Mr. Rosendale. Okay. If watchtower currently covers about
80 percent of VA.gov's most commonly used features, what are
the other features that are not covered?
Mr. Worthington. Well, we are working our way down the
list. As Mr. DelBene mentioned, we are planning to get to 100
percent of those tier one features by the end of this year, by
the end of December. We want to get all of the features on
VA.gov similarly monitored. I think that will be a work in
progress as we continue through the year.
Mr. Rosendale. How can we believe that the veteran
submissions to those parts of the website are not being lost or
delayed?
Mr. Worthington. I think we want to look exactly into that
question. Now that we have the pattern of these initial errors,
we are going to be looking at all of the different types to
ensure that if we see any similar issues we can fix them as
well.
Mr. Rosendale. Again, how can we be sure, Mr. DelBene, that
that information is not being lost or delayed if it is not
being monitored by watchtower?
Mr. DelBene. I think the important thing is the error
handling if something does not get caught has changed so that
it always goes into the inbox for somebody to human process.
That says, one, we want to monitor how it is doing; but two, we
have a failsafe that goes in for manual processing.
Mr. Rosendale. Is that happening now?
Mr. DelBene. We are putting that error handling in place.
Yes. Have for at least 80 percent of the case.
Mr. Rosendale. It is happening now? You say you are putting
it in place.
Mr. DelBene. Well, it is part of this process of putting
the watchtower in place and getting the error handling correct.
Mr. Rosendale. Okay. Mr. DelBene, do you intend to wrap up
your Code Yellow special focus on fixing VA.gov in the next 2
weeks?
Mr. Worthington. I believe that is our goal is to complete
our Code Yellow in the next 2 weeks. Before we would exit the
Code Yellow, we would have had to achieve the goal of getting
100 percent of those features fully monitored, and so we will
only exit the Code Yellow if that is true but our plan is to do
so.
Mr. Rosendale. Do you believe that is possible, that this
is physically possible, because we are going to be coming back
again and bringing these questions up, so.
Mr. Worthington. Yes, I currently believe we can finish our
stated goal of the exit of the Code Yellow for those tier one
features by the end of this year.
Mr. DelBene. I think it is important also, if I may just
very quickly, the importance of Code Yellow is we do not
actually exit the Code Yellow until the exit criteria are met,
which means we will be understating the timeframe as Charles
said but----
Mr. Rosendale. Sure. I am more concerned about the work
being done than what color you call it. Okay?
Mr. DelBene. Fair enough.
Mr. Rosendale. I just want the work to be done. I want you
to be truthful when you are here before us that this is
realistically how long it is going to take us to accomplish
that. I would rather have a little bit of bad news right now
knowing that it is going to take a little bit longer and have
it be accurate than have you blowing smoke up the rear end of a
horse, okay, right now telling us bad information.
Mr. DelBene. Understood.
Mr. Rosendale. That is basically what I am getting at.
Mr. Worthington. I do want to be clear that we are focusing
on those most used features. We still also want to cover all of
the features of the website. As we expand the watchtower to
include all the features we may find other things. That would
be the hope is that we do find them so we can fix them.
Mr. Rosendale. Mr. DelBene, I want to turn to the pension
application form that was disabled on VA.gov. How long did it
go without being updated to reflect the changes to the paper
form?
Mr. DelBene. I believe the current version of the paper
form was implemented in 2018. For at least a year thereafter
there would have been a policy to allow the old form as well.
For at least a year past that. You can say around 2019 it would
have still been accepted. From that point forward, when an
agent received it and started processing it, they would have to
reach out to the veteran to get that additional information.
It is important to stress that at least half of the times
when an agent receives one of these pension forms they actually
have to go back to the veteran to get more information and this
became one of those cases. I do not want to speak for the VBA
folks. They can do that as well. They became adept at having
the exact information they need reaching out to the veterans to
bring that back in to continue the processing.
Mr. Rosendale. Okay. I guess really the thing that I am
getting at is to make sure why is it that we are putting a
different application form online, okay, electronically, and
possibly issuing a paper form that does not reflect the same
request. If a veteran has in their possession an old form that
is one thing but we absolutely should not have a paper form
reflective of different requests than the electronic form
through the agency.
Mr. DelBene. I agree. I think this was a case as I tried to
explain that the prioritization was such that this did not rise
to the top of the list. When we saw it in the summer we said
this is causing more difficulty for veterans. We should fix it
now. That is why we chose to pull it down and to actually use
PACT Act funding which we are appreciative of to be able to
revamp the form.
Mr. Rosendale. Thank you.
I recognize Ranking Member Cherfilus-McCormick.
Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
My question is for Mr. Shute. One of the questions, one of
the things that we hope to happen, any implementation of an IT
solution is that you could prevent any problems which usually
happens after you recognize it, mitigate the situation which I
think freezing it so far is a mitigation attempt but also
correcting it, correcting that issue. As I mentioned, I really
wanted to make our veterans kind of relieve some of that
anxiety. Earlier you indicated that the VA froze all the debt
generation and collection for the vets who already received a
letter. How can they contact the VA to find out the status of
their debt?
Mr. Shute. All veterans can reach out to us through the
National Call Center. The call center agents are equipped with
talking points and additional guidance that can help them
navigate any questions related to debt.
Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick. Thank you.
Then I guess my last comment and question that I would want
from you is like a reassurance. You know, usually we try to be,
especially on this committee, be bipartisan because our concern
is the veterans. I think the reassurance that we are going to
do everything we can to make sure that our veterans are not
suffering a negative economic impact due to mistakes to
implementing our IT system is really what we are trying to draw
out of here. That we will do everything in our power to make
sure they do not have a negative impact. Could you guys assure
us that we are on the same page; that we could do that for our
veterans?
Mr. Shute. We can definitely assure you of that. You have
my word that we, in putting the veteran at the center of
everything that we do, are going to make sure that not only we
make every single veteran whole who is affected by this issue
but any debts that were created as a result of any of these
issues will not be incurred for those veterans.
Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick. Thank you so much.
I yield back.
Mr. Rosendale. I recognize Representative Self.
Mr. Self. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I think I know the answers to this but I want to make clear
to any veterans that might be watching this, I think I have
this right. Prior to June 2022, a 90-year-old veteran who
collects a VA pension--this is for you, Mr. Tellez--is
responsible for updating VA on his Social Security income every
year. If his Social Security payment went up and he did not
report it he would automatically have a debt with the VA.
Now, first of all, is that correct?
Mr. Tellez. Thank you for your question, Congressman. I am
going to have to take that back to our policy folks. I do not
want to misspeak on that issue.
Mr. Self. Okay. Then my follow-up question is, does the
annual Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA) make up additional
income? Is that what you are counting as additional income? Not
a different adjudicated Social Security claim; simply the
yearly COLA?
Mr. Tellez. Congressman, I will have to take that back to
our policy folks and provide you an answer to that which we are
happy to do.
Mr. Self. I would love to see that answer because, I mean,
this goes to the nuts and bolts of what we are discussing here.
What exactly is a COLA increase? Is it the yearly COLA or is
it--our income increase, is it the yearly COLA or is it simply
a change in the claim for some reason? It is vitally important.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Rosendale. Thank you very much, Representative.
Mr. Shute, we have been talking about the veterans pensions
and exactly what is going to happen and the process therein.
First of all, what exactly was wrong with the Social Security
computer matching agreement and what exactly did they fix so
that you can rely upon it today?
Mr. Shute. From my understanding, the information that was
provided as part of that computer match was not providing
accurate income data from the Social Security Administration.
The teams have been working on that. That has since been
corrected but that was the issue.
Mr. Rosendale. Okay. Just for clarification purposes, when
Ranking Member Cherfilus-McCormick was asking about all of this
you made reference to the self-reporting requirements of the
veterans and how that was working. I think it should be made
pretty clear here, very clear here that the problem was not
with the self-reporting of the veterans. The problem was with
the reporting that the Social Security Administration was doing
with VA.
Mr. Shute. The only part that I would like to clarify there
is when we identified the discrepancies in the computer match
we stopped using it entirely. Once those issues were corrected
and we could rely upon the data coming back from the Social
Security Administration, that is when the comparison of the
self-reported data to the computer match was effectuated, which
did result in those debts. It was not until we could accurately
rely upon that information that that match occurred.
Mr. Rosendale. I understand that but again, I want to make
sure that we are clear here that this was not a deficiency by
the veterans themselves and their reporting; it was a problem
with the software or the reporting that the Social Security
Administration was doing with the Veterans Administration.
Mr. Shute. I agree. We take full responsibility for the
issues with that computer match and that is why we are taking
the actions that we are taking right now.
Mr. Rosendale. Okay. Again, I just wanted to clarify that
because as the conversation was taking place it sounded like a
lot of the weight of this was being blamed upon the veterans
themselves for some kind of inaccuracies and self-reporting,
and I wanted to make sure that that was not.
Mr. Shute, exactly what needs to happen in order for
Secretary McDonough to erase these debts?
Mr. Shute. The Cleland-Dole Act provided us some
authorities that we are working to codify into regulation. As
we are working to do that we want to develop this interim
policy that will allow us to basically take action before those
authorities are codified into regulation. In terms of the
specific parameters of how we apply that policy I would like to
be able to work with your staff and you, in particular, to
provide some more detailed information as I can speak to the
technological components of that but not the policy details
themselves.
Mr. Rosendale. Okay. I would like to also see us work
together to get a statement out there so that the veterans who
receive these pension payments that we can remove this cloud of
anxiety that may be hanging above them where they may or may
not know if they are obligated. That is a very, very bad
position to place them in and I would like to have language out
there that clarifies that.
Mr. DelBene, we just received less than an hour ago a
response to Chairman Bost's September 6 letter to Secretary
McDonough requesting explanations of the VA.gov problems. It
took two hearings by this subcommittee to shake this response
loose and that is absolutely unacceptable. I want to ask you
about one statement in the letter. It says that the VA chief
information officer--that is you--brought on a new senior
executive who directly reports to you and will ensure issues
related to mishandled claims and veterans unable to access a
benefit application are rapidly fixed. The letter makes direct
response to them. Okay?
Who is the new senior executive? Is he here today? He or
she here today? If not, why?
Mr. DelBene. Thank you for the question. I actually hold
myself responsible for making sure that we make any fixes. I am
not sure. I will have to go back on the reference to the actual
executive we are speaking of.
Mr. Rosendale. I have got a quote here right from the
letter from Secretary McDonough. It says, ``Recently VA's chief
information officer, CIO, brought on a new senior executive who
directly reports to him and will ensure issues related to
mishandled claims and veterans unable to access a benefit
application page are rapidly fixed.''
Mr. DelBene. Let me get back to you on that one.
Mr. Rosendale. You do not know who your new senior
executive is?
Mr. DelBene. I know all of my senior executives. I am
trying to make sure that I give you the correct information in
terms of who we are referencing there.
Mr. Rosendale. We will look for that by the end of day
today. Okay? Not by next week. If you have got a senior
executive that the Secretary of Veterans Affairs is saying is
responsible for something and that you hired them, we need to
know about that.
Mr. DelBene. Fair enough.
Mr. Rosendale. You certainly should know about that.
Mr. DelBene. We will get back to you today on that.
Mr. Rosendale. I defer to Ranking Member Cherfilus-
McCormick.
Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick. I yield my time.
Mr. Rosendale. Do you have any closing remarks? I am sorry,
Representative Cherfilus-McCormick?
Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick. I do.
Mr. Rosendale. Thank you.
Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick. Thank you so much, Chairman
Rosedale.
I appreciate the testimony and answers from all our
witnesses this afternoon. I recognize that no IT solution is
perfect and they are constantly evolving and changing and that
evolution introduces risk. VA has a lot of work to do to
resolve these IT issues and to make sure the fallout is managed
for the veterans impacted. Specifically, that veterans do not
suffer any negative impacts. We will continue to monitor this
situation until it is resolved.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Rosendale. Thank you very much, Representative
Cherfilus-McCormick.
I want to thank our witnesses for returning this afternoon
to update the committee and the public on these issues that are
so important for veterans and their livelihoods all around the
country. Please remember these hearings are not just for the
people in this room. Tens of thousands of people are watching
on the internet and on C-SPAN. Veterans expect that whenever
the VA gives them a piece of technology to use it is going to
work. It is supposed to improve their lives. When it does not
work, veterans and their family members should be confident
that the VA will take responsibility for the consequences. I
appreciate our witnesses explaining what they have done and
plan to do to make these benefits right. I still question why
no action was taken for 5 years, for 10 years, or even 12 years
after the technical glitches began. I hope no more shoes will
drop and there will be no more need for another hearing. As I
said in September, regardless of what happens, our focus on
making the veterans whole will continue. They cannot be left
waiting and wondering until the VA gets around to helping them.
With that I ask unanimous consent that all members have 5
legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include
extraneous material.
Without objection, so ordered. The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:54 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
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. Paul Shute,
Assistant Deputy Under Secretary, Automated Benefits Delivery, Veterans
Benefits Administration, Mr. Raymond Tellez, Executive Director, Office
of Business Integration, Veterans Benefits Administration, and Mr.
Charles Worthington, VA's Chief Technology Officer, Office of
Information and Technology.
VA is committed to providing Veterans with a seamless digital
experience and the VA.gov platform strives to provide that digital
front door. Nearly 14 million Veterans and others access VA.gov for
information and resources each month. VA.gov provides Veterans with an
online platform to learn about, apply for, and manage their VA benefits
and healthcare. As an update to our September hearing, the Department
would like to share our progress on the recent VA.gov issues.
REMEDIATION
Disability Compensation Claim Submission Errors: Earlier this year,
we identified approximately 32,000 claims that were not correctly
established due to a technological issue. Since our last update to the
Committee, VA has established 25,257 disability claim submissions
through a series of automated claims establishments along with
correspondence to each impacted Veteran. VA is reviewing the record of
every affected Veteran to ensure no claimant has been negatively
impacted by this system failure. To provide full transparency, even if
the review does not result in a change to benefit entitlement,
claimants will receive notice when the review is complete, citing the
considered documents and evidence. For all affected living and deceased
Veterans, the date of claim will reflect the date of the earliest
failed submission. As of November 28, 2023, 89.4 percent of the 25,257
established disability claims have been decided. In order to prevent
similar issues in the future, VA established a backup procedure in
January 2023, and further refined procedures for claims submissions
that encounter this error to be routed as a package, with all documents
submitted by the claimant, to VA's centralized mail portal for
processing. VA will capture any claim that failed submission and route
for processing in a timely manner. The remaining identified claims are
expected to be batch-established in December 2023.
Dependency Submission Claim Errors: In August 2023, VA identified
45,903 Veterans who had filed a request to update their dependency
status online and did not have those claims successfully processed. In
October 2023, VA completed analysis of all electronic dependency
submissions since 2011 and identified over 81,000 Veterans who filed a
request to update their dependency status online and did not have those
submissions successfully processed (an update to the 45,903 Veterans
provided above). VA is reviewing all affected dependency claims
submissions to ensure no claimant has been negatively impacted by this
error in VA.gov. This includes a review for a potential overpayment to
the claimant and mitigation of debts attributed to the failed
submission. As of November 28, 2023, VA has established 70,406
dependency reviews and has completed 37.5 percent dependency reviews,
providing decision notice to the Veteran. Approximately 10,000
dependency claims are targeted for a December 2023 batch claims
establishment. Moving forward, all dependency claims submissions that
encounter an error will be routed to VA's centralized mail portal for
processing to capture any future claims that may fail.
PACT Act Intent to File (ITF) Issue: 38 C.F.R Sec. 3.114
incentivizes claimants to file their claim or ITF as soon as possible
after enactment of a law or policy establishing eligibility for
benefits by providing for the maximum retroactive benefit available. If
a claim or ITF is received within one year from the effective date of
an enacted law or change in the way VA addresses an issue, benefits may
be authorized from the effective date of the law or VA issue change.
Most Veterans and survivors who applied for benefits or who submitted
an ITF by August 14, 2023, if granted, would have their benefits
backdated to August 10, 2022. Due to the record-high PACT Act claims
submissions leading up to the August 2023 submission deadline, the
backend VA.gov system experienced an abnormal increase in ``timeout''
errors indicating VA.gov was unable to process the Veterans' Intents to
File (ITF) and prevented some Veterans from completing a disability
claim application. In response to this error, VA published a notice in
the Federal Register recognizing VA.gov submissions received through
August 14, 2023, as received by VA on August 8, 2023, preserving the
most favorable effective date for the claim. Additionally, VA
temporarily enhanced the call center Interactive Voice Response to
prioritize ITF calls from Veterans during business hours. This
enhancement also allowed Veterans afterhours access to provide personal
identifiable information, enabling VA to call them back to complete the
ITF process. The VA.gov technology issue was resolved in September
2023. VA contacted all affected users by email to assure them their ITF
was received in VA's Veterans Benefits Management System (VBMS). VA
identified 429 Intent to File submissions needing establishment, which
were batch-processed in September 2023.
Notice of Disagreement Issue: In September 2023, VA identified a
technical issue on VA.gov by noting a drop of about 900 appeals from
the normal VA.gov submission volume. VA investigated the issue and
quickly deployed a fix. It was determined that about 3,152 Veterans
visiting the site may have been impacted by the inability to load a
webpage that's part of the VA.gov Notice Of Disagreement form. VA will
contact the impacted Veterans to ensure they were able to successfully
submit their appeal without any impact to their appeal date.
REVIEWS AND IMPROVEMENTS
As this Subcommittee is aware, IT solutions are constantly evolving
and changing, and software issues can arise. The Department
acknowledges, however, the unacceptable time it took to proactively
identify these issues with VA.gov. VA is taking all necessary steps to
prevent similar issues in the future, and, if issues do arise, to
identify and fix those issues quickly. We are also conducting a full
review of all VA.gov processing systems to ensure we have comprehensive
error handling in place.
From a technical perspective, VA's Office of Information and
Technology (OIT) has implemented a ``Code Yellow'' process to ensure
that we can more accurately observe and monitor potential issues in
VA.gov. The goals of Code Yellow include monitoring the health of the
most important applications and features on VA.gov and making these
monitors accessible in one place. Additionally, Code Yellow ensures a
government employee is aware of any significant issue within 24 hours
of detection.
So far, this effort has led to 56 automatic monitors being
consolidated onto a unified ``watch tower,'' where the health of VA.gov
can be discerned in a single place. So far, 80 percent of VA.gov's most
important features are represented on this watch tower, and VA expects
to complete automatic monitors on the remaining top features by the end
of Quarter 1 in Fiscal Year 2024. OIT has also established standard
operating procedures that ensure alerts on the watch tower are triaged
as they happen.
In addition, VA is investing in modernizing our claims and appeals
processing infrastructure to ensure a seamless, error-free experience
for Veterans, their families, caregivers and survivors on VA.gov. Even
as we work to incorporate monitoring, the root causes of these issues
stem from many different failure points in VA's legacy infrastructure.
Using funding from the Toxic Exposures Fund, OIT is continuing to
modernize and de-layer this infrastructure, which will reduce the
number of failure points and make the remaining ones more fault
tolerant. 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.
ONGOING MODERNIZATION
Finally, while not directly related to previous VA.gov issues, I
would like to take this opportunity to address the recent notification
concerning the VA.gov pension application interactive online form (VA
Form 21P-527EZ) being temporarily unavailable from November 8, 2023,
through January 31, 2024. Leveraging PACT Act funding, VA is updating
the interactive form to ensure it matches the current paper version of
the form. The current interactive form did not match the paper form, so
based on end user feedback we decided to temporarily disable the
interactive form until it has been updated to avoid unnecessary
confusion or processing delays. Veterans, their families, and
accredited representatives who attempt to apply online are now
redirected to download the current form and submit a completed
application using VA QuickSubmit, AccessVA's online alternative to fax
or mail documents to the centralized mail portal. All Veterans with a
pension application in progress via the discontinued application will
automatically have an Intent to File (ITF) saved to their record to
preserve the earliest possible effective date.
CONCLUSION
Chairman Rosendale, Ranking Member Cherfilus-McCormick and Members
of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you
today. As previously mentioned, VA.gov is the digital front door, and
Veterans need to have confidence and trust their benefits and services
are available, accurate, and secure. I look forward to continuing
working with this Subcommittee to address our greatest priorities and
the challenges we face in our digital transformation. This concludes my
testimony, and I look forward to answering your questions.
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