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The Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA’s) Digital GI Bill effort represents our commitment to making it easier and faster than ever for Veterans and their families to receive the education benefits and services they’ve earned. In the first month following this critical modernization of the GI Bill®, VA processed over 296,000 claims, totaling over $564 million in benefits that are enhancing the lives of 228,600 Veterans and their beneficiaries.
Led by the Veterans Benefits Administration’s Education Service and VA’s Office of Information and Technology, the modernization of the GI Bill and its IT systems simplifies user processes and eliminates the need to navigate multiple systems. The effort improves claims processing and customer service by delivering direct, online, one-stop access to GI Bill benefits and information.
On July 8, 2024, VA released its latest system update for the modernization, moving one step closer to decommissioning a 50+ year-old legacy mainframe that processes all GI Bill® benefits payments and services. The update tested, secured, and converted beneficiary data and payments, successfully moving 87% of all education payment processing to a modern platform, significantly reducing security risks and systems maintenance costs to VA.
Since March 2021, these enhancements have improved education benefits services for Veterans and their loved ones. The upgrades include launching My Education Benefits in August 2022, releasing VA’s Enrollment Manager in early 2023, and months later successfully migrating education payment processing to a safer and faster environment.
Impact for VA
This breakthrough permanently joins VA’s three authoritative databases—VA’s Corporate Database, Master Person Index, and VA Profile— to confirm, sync, and safely share accurate claims data automatically across essential and complicated IT networks so Veterans get their benefits faster and safer. This database integration is a first for the enterprise.
We’ve also streamlined eligibility confirmation through the automated intake of VA and Department of Defense information and service history updates for Veterans—vastly improving interoperability and the processing of supplemental claims.
Collaboration Essential to Success
Collaboration across VA’s vast enterprise is vital to achieving these critical milestones. Teams from across the Office of Information and Technology’s Business Integration and Outcomes Service, End User Services, Software Product Management, IT Budget and Finance, and Cybersecurity worked with the Veterans Benefits Administration, VA’s Office of Financial Management, VA’s Office of Business Integration, the Defense Department, and more than 10 other partners at VA to coordinate the complex IT, data, and business changes needed to deliver this digital transformation.
Building a production-like, integrated test environment to scan conversation data from VA’s legacy system to the new platform helped our teams quickly identify and fix data quality issues and release the upgrade ahead of schedule. Our agile, incremental, and user-centric approach to designing, developing, and deploying solutions helped VA continuously learn and rapidly modify products that best meet the unique needs of the system’s stakeholders.
“This milestone shows the power of collaboration across OIT, our business partners, leadership, and external stakeholders,” says Riley Ross, Supervisory IT Program Manager, Software Product Management. “While undeniably complex, the updates we made in this release are essential to helping VA progress towards decommissioning the legacy Benefits Delivery Network. I’m proud of our work and how we’ve set a standard of collaboration for other VA modernization efforts.”
Joseph Garcia, Executive Director of Education Services for the Veterans Benefits Administration, agrees saying, “This milestone results from remarkable cross-collaboration efforts across VA, with our partners across the Veterans Benefits Administration, the Office of Information and Technology, and the VA Offices of Business Integration and Financial Management. This success sets a precedent for all future modernization efforts at VA. I am proud of our teams’ hard work and relentless dedication in accomplishing another step towards modernizing the GI Bill® experience for everyone.”
Impact for Veterans
This multi-year modernization initiative provides nearly one million students with an online platform to access and manage their VA education benefits annually. The Digital GI Bill helps deliver real-time eligibility and enrollment progress, more timely and accurate claims processing and payment distribution, immediate access to beneficiary records, and timely communication via phone, email, text, and chat.
By transforming its legacy systems into an integrated and scalable platform, VA is ensuring that Veterans and their beneficiaries receive their benefits quickly and accurately. These recent enhancements improved the processing of monthly housing allowance payments by over 30%. In the month following the update, VA more efficiently processed over 296,000 claims to 228,600 beneficiaries, totaling over $564 million in benefits through modernized systems.
The teams leading this IT modernization continue strengthening security and enhancing the platform’s ability to automate manual education claims processing. The next upgrade, projected to occur in 2025, will move the remainder of education payment processing to the new platform, followed by the launch of Benefits Manager, a modernized system Veterans Claims Examiners will use to review and process GI Bill® claims.
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