Veterans Benefits Administration

This testimony discusses long-standing management problems plaguing Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) programs that provide financial and other benefits to veterans, their dependents, and survivors. These programs include disability compensation benefits, disability pension benefits, education assistance, life insurance, housing loan guaranty, and vocational rehabilitation and counseling services. Concerns have been raised about the programs' outmoded processes, long waits for disability decisions, and the quality of decisions all of which affect the quality of service provided to veterans and the effective use of taxpayer dollars. This testimony discusses (1) recent progress by the Veterans Benefits Administration, which runs the benefits programs; (2) areas in which progress is lacking; and (3) changes in program design that could hold potential for greater gains.

GAO noted that: (1) VBA implemented a new accuracy review system that represents an important step forward in measuring the accuracy of the regional offices' adjudication of disability claims and in providing data to identify error-prone cases and correct the causes of errors; (2) to improve the accountability of its service delivery networks and all other VBA organizational units, VBA implemented, at the start of the fiscal year 1999, a performance evaluation system called the balanced scorecard; (3) VBA believes this new approach will drive organizational change; provide feedback to employees on measures they can influence; and link performance appraisal and reward systems to performance measures, thereby providing incentives to managers to work as teams in meeting performance measures; (4) VBA plans to identify the necessary employee skills and work processes for every decisionmaking position, implement skill certification or credentialing for these positions, and implement performance-based training connected to measurable outcomes; (5) VBA's goal is to develop data systems that enable forecasting and are reliable, timely, accurate, honest, flexible, and integrated across the organization; (6) toward this end, VBA has completed or has in process a variety of actions, such as establishing an office to manage the process of improving data systems, developing a system for capturing detailed data on regional office disability rating decisions, acquiring actuarial assistance in developing forecasting capabilities, establishing a data inventory, and developing a data validation methodology; (7) despite progress, VBA still has much to do in addressing issues related to accuracy in adjudicating disability claims; (8) even with the improvements provided by the new accuracy measurement system, VBA's ability to identify error-prone cases and target corrective actions is constrained by the limited data that it captures on: (a) the medical characteristics of veterans whose claims are processed incorrectly; and (b) why medical evidence is deficient; (9) the Congressional Commission on Servicemembers and Veterans Transition Assistance stated that some VBA regional offices may be so small that their disproportionately large supervisory overhead unnecessarily consumes personnel resources; (10) VBA needs to improve its success in placing disabled veterans in jobs; and (11) GAO and others suggest that making dramatic gains in some areas may require changes in the design of the programs.