Apr112013
Hearing Transcript on U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Short- and Long-Term Strategies for Implementing New GI Bill Requirements.
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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS SHORT- AND LONG-TERM STRATEGIES FOR IMPLEMENTING NEW GI BILL REQUIREMENTS
HEARING BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY OF THE COMMITTEE ON VETERANS' AFFAIRS U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION NOVEMBER 18, 2008 SERIAL No. 110-108 Printed for the use of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
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CORRINE BROWN, Florida |
STEVE BUYER, Indiana, Ranking |
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Malcom A. Shorter, Staff Director SUBCOMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY
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. |
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C O N T E N T S
November 11, 2008
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Short- and Long-Term Strategies for Implementing New GI Bill Requirements
OPENING STATEMENTS
Chairwoman Stephanie Herseth Sandlin
Prepared statement of Chairwoman Herseth Sandlin
Hon. John Boozman, Ranking Republican Member
Prepared statement of Congressman Boozman
WITNESSES
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Keith M. Wilson, Director, Office of Education Service, Veterans Benefits Administration
Prepared statement of Mr. Wilson
MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
Post-Hearing Questions and Responses for the Record:
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS SHORT- AND LONG-TERM STRATEGIES FOR IMPLEMENTING NEW GI BILL REQUIREMENTS
Thursday, November 11, 2008
U. S. House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Economic Opportunity,
Committee on Veterans' Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:37 a.m., in Room 334, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin [Chairwoman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Herseth Sandlin, Boozman, and Scalise.
OPENING STATEMENT CHAIRWOMAN HERSETH SANDLIN
Ms. HERSETH SANDLIN. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. The Committee on Veterans' Affairs, Subcommittee on Economic Opportunity, oversight hearing on the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) short- and long-term strategies for implementing the new GI Bill requirements will come to order.
I ask unanimous consent that all Members have five legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and that written statements be made part of the record. Hearing no objection, so ordered.
I would like to welcome everyone back to Washington. Many of you before us today are well aware of this Subcommittee's active participation in providing oversight on the implementation of Public Law 110-252, which provides new education benefits for our Nation's veterans who served after September 11, 2001. In previous hearings conducted by this Subcommittee, we received testimony from the VA informing us of its intent to contract out the new information technology (IT) requirements under Public Law 110-252. Later, on October 23, 2008, Committee staff were informed of the VA's new short-term plan to no longer use a private contractor for the immediate implementation of a new IT system but, rather, use VA resources to create a temporary solution to meet the August 2009 requirements. We are also aware that the VA is developing a long-term plan for revamping its current IT system.
I look forward to receiving the VA's testimony that highlights its new short-term and long-term plans. Today's testimony regarding such plans will not only serve this Congressional Subcommittee and our ongoing oversight responsibilities, but it is also my hope that it will serve the individuals overseeing the transition within the Executive Branch.
The passage of Public Law 110-252 is a significant milestone for our Nation's veterans, but a lot of work must be completed before the benefits can be received.
While the 110th Congress comes to a close, I would like to assure our Nation's veterans that we will continue to monitor the progress of the VA's short- and long-term plans in the 111th Congress to ensure that their earned benefits are delivered in a timely manner.
I look forward to working with Chairman Bob Filner, Ranking Member Boozman and Members of this Subcommittee to continue to provide effective oversight on the implementation of the new Montgomery GI Bill's requirements.
[The statement of Chairwoman Herseth Sandlin appears in the Appendix.]
Ms. HERSETH SANDLIN. I now recognize Mr. Boozman for any opening remarks he may have.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN BOOZMAN
Mr. BOOZMAN. Thank you, Madam Chair, and good morning to everyone. When we met a few weeks ago to begin our oversight of how VA intends to implement the new GI Bill, there was considerable discussion about whether VA should develop the new information technology system in-house or hire a contractor for development, and possibly some clerical support. I stated then that I didn't believe that should be our focus and I still don't.
Now that the VA has made their decision to use Space and Naval Warfare Systems (SPAWAR) Command for both the long- and short-term fix, we need to not second-guess this decision, but help VA as they implement the program.
However, I have some concern about how VA is organized to manage both the short- and long-term solutions based on the briefings given to the staff and what we will see today. More specifically, the charters for the Executive Committee, the Steering Committee and the working groups possibly need some more definition. And I am still unclear about the responsibility of the senior managers.
Second, while VA has put together a plan to implement the short-term solution, there seems to be very little definition at this point of the long-term effort by VA and SPAWAR.
Third, what are the key functions of the Benefits Delivery Network (BDN) system and what are its limitations.
Finally, the question remains regarding VA's plan for its education workforce. They have stated before that no one will lose their VA job and that they intend to hire additional temporary staff as part of the short-term solution. And I hope we can hear a few more details about that today. And I really do appreciate your all's hard work and it seems like we are moving forward. So I congratulate you on that. Thank you, Madam Chair.
[The statement of Congressman Boozman appears in the Appendix.]
Ms. HERSETH SANDLIN. Thank you, Mr. Boozman.
I would like to welcome our panelists testifying before the Subcommittee today. Joining us on our first and only panel today is Mr. Keith Wilson, Director of the Office of Education Service, Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA), Department of Veterans Affairs. He is accompanied by Mr. Stephen Warren, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Information Technology, Office of Information and Technology (OI&T); Mr. Jan Frye, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Acquisitions and Materials Management; and Captain Mark Krause, Commanding Officer of Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center, New Orleans.
Thank you, gentlemen, for being here. We look forward to hearing from you and posing some questions to get additional information that will be helpful to us.
STATEMENT OF KEITH M. WILSON, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF EDUCATION SERVICE, VETERANS BENEFITS ADMINISTRATION, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS; ACCOMPANIED BY STEPHEN W. WARREN, PRINCIPAL DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY, OFFICE OF INFORMATION AND TECHNOLOGY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS; AND JAN FRYE, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY, ACQUISITIONS AND MATERIEL MANAGEMENT, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS; AND CAPTAIN MARK KRAUSE, USNR, CHIEF STAFF OFFICER, SPACE AND NAVAL WARFARE SYSTEMS CENTER ATLANTIC, DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
Ms. HERSETH SANDLIN. Mr. Wilson, you are recognized.
Mr. WILSON. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good morning. Good morning, Madam Chairman and Ranking Member Boozman and Members of the Subcommittee. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you to discuss VA's strategy for implementation of the Post-9/11 GI Bill. My testimony will address the short- and long-term strategies in developing information technology components for implementation of the Post-9/11 GI Bill1 bill as requested by the Subcommittee.
Our short-term strategy to implement the Post-9/11 GI Bill consists of a two-part IT solution: a fiscal payment system that uses VA's existing Benefits Delivery Network to issue payments, and a front-end tool for use by Education Service claims examiners to augment the manual process for claims adjudication.
The Chapter 33 front-end tool will be used to augment the manual process by providing additional automated support that is accessible by processors at each of our regional processing offices as well as central office. The front-end tool will be used primarily by claims examiners in preparing and processing award actions.
The implementation of the short-term solution will require approximately 400 additional processors at our regional processing offices. This number may be subject to change depending on the level of automation that is achieved prior to August 1, 2009. This automation is critical to VA's short-term success.
The combined IT and staffing approach is a short-term solution we expect to retire no later than November of 2010, when the long-term automated system being developed by our partners at SPAWAR is deployed.
Our long-term strategy to implement the post-9/11 GI Bill will rely on support from SPAWAR to develop an end-to-end solution that utilizes rules-based industry standard technologies. The Chapter 33 program contains eligibility rules for benefit determinations that work well with rules-based technology while requiring minimal human intervention.
VA is working with SPAWAR on the long-term IT solution and expects the development of this program to take approximately 18 to 24 months to complete. The priorities established for IT enhancements for the short-term front-end piece does have a relationship with the priority that SPAWAR will follow when developing the long-term solution, such that some of the long-term IT functionality could be used to augment our short-term solution. If SPAWAR can develop long-term functionality that can be used in the short term and can be deployed prior to August of 2009, they will do so.
In both the short term and the long term, SPAWAR also is providing IT program management support and technical assistance in managing the necessary data flows. VA received $120 million in supplemental funding to implement this new benefit, $100 million in general operating expenses (GOE) and $20 million in IT appropriations account. To date, VA has transferred $13.25 million from its supplemental IT funds to SPAWAR for the purpose of project management for both the long-term and short-term solutions and for IT support for data integration to support the long-term solution. The remaining $6.75 million from the supplemental IT funding will be moved to data integration and testing associated with the data integration initiative.
VA has requested a reprogramming of $35 million of the available $100 million in GOE to the IT appropriations account. That will be used to pay for development and implementation of this long-term solution. The remaining $65 million in GOE funds is sufficient to cover the additional full-time equivalent (FTE) that will be required.
To meet the program's August 1, 2009, effective date, VA has assigned project oversight duties, established milestones and instituted frequent oversight review. VA Education Service established a Program Executive Office (PEO) that is responsible for monitoring and coordinating all Post-9/11 GI Bill implementation activities.
In addition to the PEO, VA contracted with the MITRE Corporation to provide technical and program management advice to Education Service leadership in support of Chapter 33 implementation, integration and oversight. The first critical milestone was met on November 14, 2008, when the completion of business requirements for the short-term payment solution occurred. The next critical milestone for the short-term solution is in completion of the IT functional requirements on November 26th.
With the completion of these functional specifications, detailed design of the solution will start, with an expected completion date of March 31st of 2009.
Madam Chair, this concludes my statement. I would be pleased to answer any questions you or any Members of the Subcommittee may have.
I would like to follow my oral statements with a PowerPoint presentation subject to any questions you have at this point. I prepared a series of slides that in some ways is redundant to the written testimony that was submitted to the Committee, but I think it is clear in terms of conceptualizing a lot of what we are doing, and visually I think it draws a very good picture of the progress that we have made. If I could go to the first slide.
Slide number two is titled Program Governance and Organizational Context. This is a visual representation of the overall government strategy that we have put in place to ensure proper oversight, management of key milestones, risk management, et cetera.
Turning, in terms of a little bit more specificity, turning to slide three, there is a sub-element of slide two, specifically laying out the relationship of three bodies that join Executive Board, the Chapter 33 Steering Committee and the Chapter 33 Working Group. The next few slides provide detailed information concerning the roles and responsibilities of each of these groups.
Turning to slide four, the Joint Executive Board is jointly chaired by the Under Secretary for Benefits, Admiral Dunne, as well as Bob Howard, the Assistant Secretary for Information and Technology. There are several members, key senior executive members that are also members of this board and there are also a series of advisors that are brought in to provide expertise and advice on specific subjects that are brought before the Joint Executive Board.
Turning to slide three. Slide three outlines the membership and the responsibilities of the Chapter 33 Steering Committee. The Chapter 33 Steering Committee has responsibility for oversight of planning and execution of the work and all the different project streams that we are required to implement for Chapter 33, and I will talk about the project streams in just a second. The Steering Committee is jointly chaired by myself and Paul Tibbits, who is Chief Information Officer for OI&T Enterprise Development.
There are members throughout the organization on the Steering Committee as well. Most specifically, I would like to point out two committee members by name, the first being Ms. Alison Rosen, who is in charge of my Program Executive Office, the other being Ms. Susan Perez who is the Director of the OI&T Portfolio Management.
Those two individuals—turning to the next slide, slide 6—are the co-leads on the working group. Co-leads basic responsibility is—Ms. Perez is the IT expert, Ms. Rosen is the individual responsible for non-IT issues. They meet, obviously, on an almost daily basis. Their overall responsibility is execution of the responsibilities by each of the project leads for the work streams that we are moving forward on.
Slide seven talks very briefly about authority and change management. We did receive specific questions on that and I wanted to at least cover that from a high-level perspective at this point. Our focus on decision authority is focused on elements that would require any change in our timeline. In essence, the project leads have the authority to move forward unless there is something that changes their project timeline. That doesn't mean they don't keep everybody informed. There is a very rigorous information-gathering process that is conducted through our Program Executive Office. But they move forward and have the responsibility to move forward, assuming that there are no changes in any of their project schedules.
The Program Executive Office does have the authority to change project timelines up to 5 percent. Myself, and by extension, the Steering Committee, have the authority to change any project timeline of less than 25 percent. Obviously a change of that nature would not be made without involvement by the Joint Executive Board as well. But the final authority—the governance structure of the authority lies with myself. The Joint Executive Board's involvement is required for any changes in our schedule of 25 percent or more.
That is the process that we have established to ensure that we do not have any slippage in our schedule. That is critically important because there are significant dependencies between each of the project schedules, as I will talk about shortly.
Slide eight is a representation of the Program Executive Office that we have established within VBA, within Education Service. As I have indicated, Ms. Alison Rosen is the head of my Program Executive Office and the individuals responsible for tracking this are laid out on this chart. The Program Executive Office is in essence our nerve center. That is where we monitor what is going on within the different projects. They are responsible for tracking progress, identifying risks that exist in the projects, making sure that we have identified dependencies, one project to another or more than two projects, and they are responsible for all of the collection of information that is required to report to higher authority.
Slide nine provides both the program organization and a work breakdown structure. This is a slightly higher level than simply the Program Executive Office. This slide represents not just the Program Executive Office, but is the first slide that I have provided that indicates the projects; how we have in essence chunked out the work that we are required to do to ensure that we successfully implement Chapter 33.
The names of the project leads are provided. We have eight separate projects, seven current. One we have closed out, which was the old secure solution. So we have seven projects that we are moving forward on now to implement Chapter 33.
The best way of representing what those projects have on their plate and the time frame that they have to work their projects is laid out in slide number 10. That is our integrated project schedule. That shows the seven, in essence, swim lanes that we have chunked out this work into. It represents dependencies, one work stream to another.
Obviously there are very few things that go on within Chapter 33 that stay within just that one project. Just about everything has dependencies with other project leads as well. So that is something that we are tracking very critically.
The important thing to remember I believe concerning the project timeline—and this document comes directly from our project management plan which was provided to the Committee previously—is this is a living document. We know as we gain experience moving forward on this, that there will be changes to this. And it is specifically designed as a living document. But this will always be kept current. It will always represent where we are at and what we have learned on each of the different project efforts.
Slide number 11 talks briefly about government activities. Some of this I covered already, but I think it deserves emphasis. Again, the Program Executive Office will receive each week program—each month, rather, program management plans from each of the work streams. That is in some ways a safety net. That is not to represent that our PEO only meets with the project leads on a monthly basis. They are meeting essentially on a daily basis, but once a month we do conduct a full, thorough review to ensure that we have accounted for any dependencies or other risks that we might not have identified previously.
The Chapter 33 Working Group, Joint Executive Board, and the Steering Committee hold weekly meetings. So we have a very rigorous process.
What we don't have and what we have done to speed up the process is not implement what would normally be seen as a milestone review process. Our milestone reviews are essentially every week. We have very detailed project plans. We review those plans weekly to ensure that we have met for that week exactly what each of the projects had on their plate for that week. If they aren't able to meet them, we either adjust the schedule or—quite honestly, we have people in on the weekend getting caught up to make sure that we stay on target.
Slide number 12 touches on a couple of items other than IT that I have not provided information on previously but there have been questions on.
The first is status of our regulation package. Obviously we did need to complete regulations. We have draft regulations at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). They are being reviewed by OMB now. We expect those to be published for comment on or about December 1st.
The Chapter 33 hiring plan, the regional processing offices have already been given authority to hire staff. They are completing the preliminary paperwork to do that now. We anticipate recruitment starting on or about December 1st. We anticipate having that staff on board by March 1st and training will begin no later than March 1st for those additional hires.
Slide number 13 is a representation of the claims process itself. And we wanted to put that in specifically to give a visual representation of what is different, what is going to be different under Chapter 33 as opposed to the process that a veteran goes through right now. The blue squares represent the things that will be different. The green squares represent the process as it exists now that will be essentially unchanged come August 1st.
So, in essence, from the veterans' perspective and from the perspective of the stakeholders that we rely on for information, the process is going to be essentially the same. The veteran will apply online for benefits, as they do now. They have the ability to apply with hard copy if they choose to do that. But we highly encourage them to apply online through our GI Bill Web site. We will determine eligibility with our existing staff and the additional staff that we hire to process these claims, just as we do now. The determinations for claims processing are manual determinations now, looking at the screens and ensuring the data represents that the person is eligible. The information that we require from the school concerning enrollment will continue to be reported to us the same manner in which it is reported now through our existing VA One system.
The additional information that we need from schools to administer the program, specifically tuition and fee amounts as well as participation in the Yellow Ribbon Program, is going to be reported to us by that existing mechanism. We are modifying VA once to accept fields that will allow the schools to report that information to us. So, again, from the school perspective, from the certifying official perspective, they will continue to use the same tool that they use now to report information to us.
The eligibility information that we need from DoD will continue to come to us through the existing data feeds that DoD has been using for some time. Those data feeds are being enhanced to satisfy the additional eligibility requirement under Chapter 33.
For example, transfer of entitlement benefits, we are well underway to receiving that information. In fact, this week we are receiving the first test file of data from DoD. The things that will be different concerning the claims process is—the first thing is veterans will not go in monthly at the end of the month and verify their enrollment, which is the process now. That is a step that they will not need to take. The check, the recurring housing allowance checks, will go out in an automated process, just as it does for our other benefit programs.
The temporary system that we have set up simply does not allow the ability to apply—or to monthly certify. We don't anticipate that being a problem because in some respects that is a duplication of the information that the school provides us. The school is required to provide information to us if a student drops or withdraws from enrollment. But the certification of monthly enrollment was a back-up system that we did like, but we will not have that in the short-term.
And then the payment structure, obviously, will be different. Instead of the single monthly check going out as is done now, there will be the three different benefit payments that are called for under the bill. Our oversight mechanisms will remain in place. The auditing trail, the reports, the correspondence will remain in place. So those will remain unchanged.
Slide 14 is information that I have covered largely in my written testimony. But again, what we are looking at doing is setting up an augmented, manual process on August 1st. It is going to involve both manual processing and some automated processing. The level of automated processing we do not know yet, because there is a tie between the long-term strategy we are implementing and what we will be able to bring online from that long-term strategy in the short term. In essence, we are going to be creating a throw-away system in the short term to administer the programs.
In the long term, again, we are looking at a rules-based process. And from the prospect of administering the benefit, the thing that we are going to really like about the automated process in the long-term is twofold. Number one, it is going to be an automated process, so we will be able to better manage the seasonal nature of our work. We have an existing staff. We marshal those resources as much as possible in the fall and spring semesters, but obviously it takes us a while to work out of that backlog because we are a manual FTE employee-driven process. We will be more able to manage that in the long term.
Additionally, we will have a system that is more flexible for us. So when we have changes in legislation, when there are changes to the programs, we will be able to program those changes in much faster than we do now. We will be much more agile, we will be able to respond to new legislation very quickly.
Slide 16 talks briefly about the Yellow Ribbon Program. We have had questions concerning that. We are pursuing that as we are with the other initiatives, very aggressively. Ultimately what we are hoping for is to have signed agreements back from the schools that are desiring to participate in the Yellow Ribbon Program by February 15th. The reason that we are doing this as quickly as possible before the spring is we would like veterans to have that information available come the spring when they start making decisions on where they want to go to school. So we will have that information by February.
We will have that information concerning Yellow Ribbon participation on our Web site so students will be able to go in there and look, so when they are considering where to go, they will have that information at their disposal. And, of course, we will begin processing Yellow Ribbon payments at the same time we process the other payments for benefits.
In terms of providing outreach for the Yellow Ribbon, we are working that from two perspectives; first of all, from the education professionals. We have received a lot of questions concerning the Yellow Ribbon from the education community. We have been working aggressively with potential organizations that represent those groups; for instance, the American Council on Education, the National Association of Veterans Program Administrators, to get information to those schools so they understand the specifics of what the Yellow Ribbon Program is. Our regulation drafts that are due to be published on December 1st will also talk about Yellow Ribbon processes and procedures.
We are also working with students. Obviously we have information on our Web site concerning what the Yellow Ribbon is. All of the information in our publications that are sent out to veterans and servicemembers talk about the Yellow Ribbon Program. Specifically, we are in the process of receiving a data feed from DoD and we will be doing direct mailings to all active-duty servicemembers concerning the specifics of Chapter 33 overall, not just the Yellow Ribbon.
In terms of the application and certification process, there are no real surprises there, as I have talked about already. VA wants our existing mechanism for schools to report information to us. We will be the mechanism by which Yellow Ribbon information for the student-specific information will be related to us. That is where we will find out if a school actually offers a Yellow Ribbon Program to the student in an amount that will be offset by the school for that specific student.
That completes the slide presentation. Again, Madam Chair, we would be more than happy to answer any questions from yourself or any Members of the Subcommittee.
[The statement of Mr. Wilson, and the Slide Presentation, appear in the Appendix.]
Ms. HERSETH SANDLIN. Thank you, Mr. Wilson. Let me start out with a couple of questions before turning over to Mr. Boozman. You have the Joint Executive Board, the Steering Committee and the Working Group. I think I sense from your testimony, is it really the Working Group who is going to be doing the day-to-day work?
Mr. WILSON. Yes, ma'am.
Ms. HERSETH SANDLIN. Daily decisions on what needs to be done will be made by the Working Group, unless there are changes to the project schedules?
Mr. WILSON. That is correct.
Ms. HERSETH SANDLIN. Who is monitoring the key milestones then?
Mr. WILSON. The monitoring of all of the milestones and the timelines occurs within the Program Executive Office. That is in essence our nerve center.
Ms. HERSETH SANDLIN. Is the Program Executive Office reporting to the Steering Committee and the Joint Executive Board?
Mr. WILSON. Correct.
Ms. HERSETH SANDLIN. Would you provide me more detail on how the front-end tool is going to be used?
Mr. WILSON. Yes. The front-end tool let me try to make a comparison with what we currently have within our benefits delivery network that provides some level of—I hate to use the term "automation," but it is automation calculation.
When a student enrolls in school right now, our claims examiners determine eligibility essentially manually, and they put the information in concerning enrollment into the system, and BDN provides information based on its coding and tables concerning the amount of benefit that is payable. It tracks how much remaining entitlement an individual has of the 36 months. It tracks whether or not there are overpayments, and handles all of the accounting that would be required to manage those overpayments behind the scenes.
Since we are not able to rely on BDN for those calculations and data collections, we need a separate tool to track that information. We don't want claims examiners, for instance, every time a new claim comes in, to have to manually recalculate the amount of remaining entitlement that an individual would have.
Ms. HERSETH SANDLIN. Well, I am glad you addressed some of the issues related to the coordination with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) because that has been an ongoing concern of the Subcommittee and the full Committee in different areas. I was pleased when we had our hearings in September that the testimony we received from the Department of Defense indicated everybody is on board to make this happen, and that you are using the existing data feeds.
Now, you said the first test case, test file, is going to be this week.
Mr. WILSON. Yes.
Ms. HERSETH SANDLIN. Then you said that you are going to be using existing data feed from DoD for the VA to send direct mailings to all active-duty servicemembers about the new benefit and the Yellow Ribbon Program?
Mr. WILSON. I don't think I was clear. The data feed—I probably misspoke. We are receiving a separate data dump from DoD, separate from the eligibility information we receive that provides us the current information concerning the individuals on active duty. And that specific information, so that we can mail them the information on Chapter 33. That is basically names and addresses.
Ms. HERSETH SANDLIN. Does that include Reserve and National Guard?
Mr. WILSON. It does. Any individuals that are on active duty currently.
Ms. HERSETH SANDLIN. But not those who may have separated?
Mr. WILSON. That will be a separate data dump that we will receive.
Ms. HERSETH SANDLIN. From DoD?
Mr. WILSON. Yes, we are still going to rely on DoD. The data feed we are working with to address that issue will be any active-duty member who has had active duty since September 10, 2001, understanding that some of that information is stale, but it is still something that we want to provide to that current—that record of address, so that we have sent that to the individuals.
Ms. HERSETH SANDLIN. It has been our ongoing concern about those who may have separated, even when we made some changes in the National Defense Authorization Act, before the new benefit was authorized. Trying to find these young men and women who may have separated, that are now eligible for Chapter 33 benefits as they were written in 2008; and then, of course, the new implementation for 2009.
We will want to continue to work with you on that. The Ranking Member and I have had discussions of working with the adjutant generals, the National Guard, who may be in a position of working with their State agencies to help update information that you may be getting from DoD that may still be there.
Can you tell me where, I don't see that as a key milestone, in terms of the mails that would go out. Can you give me a rough timeline of when you hope the mailings would go out?
Mr. WILSON. I can provide that. I don't have that with me, but I can provide that to the Committee.
The document on slide 10 is a macro-level milestone. Within each of these work streams we have much more detailed information in separate documentation. And I would be happy to provide that information to the Subcommittee.
Ms. HERSETH SANDLIN. Okay. Thank you.
[The information was provided in the response to question #2 from the post hearing questions and responses, which appear in the Appendix]
Ms. HERSETH SANDLIN. One last question for now, before turning over to Mr. Boozman. Do we still anticipate approximately 526,000 claims?
Mr. WILSON. That is our estimate at this point. And I wanted to make sure that I emphasize in some respects Chapter 33 is going to an area that we have not gone before. We don't have expertise with transfer of entitlement to the degree that it is offered right now. We don't have experience with the 15-year limiting date. So there is going to be some fleshing out of those numbers. But that is the estimate that we have right now, yes.
Ms. HERSETH SANDLIN. I know you said the number may be subject to change, depending on the level of automation achieved. Do you feel confident that roughly 400 new full-time employees to deal with the short-term plan of making sure that the benefits are delivered on time is sufficient?
Mr. WILSON. We are confident in that number, with an assumption that the level of automation is somewhat commensurate with what we currently have. If that is not the case, then we still have flexibility within the GOE dollars that were provided to us to hire additional staff.
Ms. HERSETH SANDLIN. Okay.
Mr. WILSON. Over that 400, if we need to.
Ms. HERSETH SANDLIN. Okay. I may have some more questions, but I will turn it over to Mr. Boozman for questions.
Mr. BOOZMAN. Thank you, Madam Chair. Mr. Wilson, when Congress did the Medicare Part D, initially we had a drug card and then we went into the program later on. But both of those one day it started and there was really—it just kind of started and, as a result, without our friends helping us in pharmacy and the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) and people like that and volunteers in healthcare, it was very difficult anyway, but it would have been much more difficult.
Is there a plan—are you going to phase it in a little bit? Are you going to do the things that you can do to individuals rather than it just starting one day? Do you understand what I am saying? In other words, a precertification, things like that. You are going to have this army of manual workers. Is there a plan, rather than just all the sudden there is nothing, and then you are going to have these 4- or 500,000 individuals? Or are we going to phase it over a period of time before it actually—
Mr. WILSON. Our anticipation is that we can do some type of work over the summer. We have not nailed down specifically what those dates would be. In essence what we would potentially be able to do, though, is issue certificates of eligibility. So we could do potentially some work over the summer, or as we receive claims, for example, assuming that the upfront tool we have would allow us to populate some preliminary information, we can populate information into that payment system. The issue that is somewhat problematic is, obviously, the program is only for training on or after August 1st. So we can't do much—well, we can't generate any payments at all until August 1st and we really can't populate much of our systems until the schools are comfortable that they will certify that Joe Veteran is going to be in school on August 1. And once they do provide that to us, then we will populate our records.
Mr. BOOZMAN. Right. I would really encourage you, again looking at those, and I think we can see other programs—but if we can kind of, do some up-front work rather than just being hit, I think that would be very helpful.
Captain Krause, will the SPAWAR structure—will SPAWAR structure the long-term solution program in accordance with standard DoD program management guidelines?
Captain KRAUSE. Sir, my name is Captain Mark Krause. Ma'am, just to correct, I was a Commanding Officer of SPAWAR Systems Center, New Orleans, as of October 1st. Now I am the Chief Staff Officer for SPAWAR System Center, Atlantic. And my boss is Admiral—now Captain Urban, and his boss is Admiral Bachmann. So, yes sir, my boss, Captain Urban and Admiral Bachmann, absolutely want us to comply with the DoD Defense Acquisition Workforce Improvement Act (DAWIA) process, and we plan to do that. And we will work with the VA to come up with some type of a meld, if you will, where we still meet the requirements of the DoD acquisition process; that everybody that I have hired to do this for my team at the SPAWAR is level-three-certified essentially to do this, but with one exception, who is a level two. But they are mostly just 14s and 15s that will in fact do that. So the answer is yes.
Mr. BOOZMAN. When do we anticipate having the long-term program plan in place?
Captain KRAUSE. Right now we are waiting—the money is now being transferred. Once we get the money, then we of course have to wait for the requirements. So we are still in the planning phase. We won't know on our end until we can get our hands on the requirements, flesh them out, go right down the system engineering, if you will, do the requirements definition, the requirements analysis, and then do the system design. And once we have that, then I will be able to essentially come up with an integrated master plan, integrated master schedule, per the DoD acquisition process that I think will bear scrutiny or be something that we can present and be confident in.
Mr. BOOZMAN. When do you think you all will have all of that, Mr. Wilson?
Mr. WILSON. The short-term solution business requirements are completed. The completion of the long-term business requirements is imminent. We have done 90 percent, 95 percent of the work on that. I believe last week we finished the cleanup of what we needed to do. We are in the process of putting that all into the appropriate format and we will have that to OI&T very, very soon.
Mr. BOOZMAN. Let me get you all to comment on something in the sense that I have seen this in multiple things with government. I am on the Aviation Subcommittee of Congress and they are in the process of trying to get their computer program for controllers and this and that. And this has been an ongoing thing for years and years and we see this so much. Whereas you go into these IT things, where is the bog-down? What are you all alert for? What do we need to be alert for? Where are you going to have your problems in the sense that these things, I think you said 18 to 24 months, or whatever. What generally makes that 18 to 24 months with an amount of money as cost becoming a 4- or 5-year program. And still not—can you all comment on that, again, so that we can be observant and just kind of where you think the problems might occur?
Mr. WILSON. I would like to ask Mr. Warren to respond to that question.
Mr. WARREN. I think you are asking a good question in terms of why do IT projects go off track, and I think there are some key areas. At the beginning, there is uncertainty about who is running the program, what are you trying to accomplish? And who is the decision maker or "the" decision maker? So that is key at the beginning so you don't get in a tug of war, "No, it is mine," "No, it is mine," and you get arguments and then people start countermanding each other.
So you deal with governance. Who is the decision maker and how the decisions are made, first governance. The second piece is in that governance, ensuring that the program has the leadership—it is very, very dangerous when the IT organization runs the project and we start building an IT solution for an IT need versus a program solution. And I think you have seen with—what Keith has laid out, that is how we structured it. It is a program plan; IT is one piece of it.
The second piece deals with requirements in terms of what is it we are going to build. And what you will find in many projects that go off track, the requirements keep changing, they keep shifting and drifting. "Oh, I forgot about this one." "Well, I really didn't mean that, I really wanted that." So you have to be very careful to make sure you define what you need and you define it in blocks. You define it in such a way that, okay, we understand that component.
So if I can take you back to the diagram that Keith had laid up, showing the sequence of what are the different steps that need to happen. By making sure you define the requirements for each of the components so folks can start working on those while you go to the next one. So define the requirements. And having a little bit of flexibility in your programming and your development that you have to wait until you have 110 percent of the requirements. So making sure that you have enough flexibility that you can actually start moving out when you have a good sense of what you need to do, so you can start thinking through where you want to go. So those are on the program side, if you will.
On the IT side there are two critical areas. The first one is you get into almost this war about architecture. What technology will we use? What specific vendor will we use in terms of product? And very often, given that technology changes so quickly on an 18-month cycle, that every 18 months somebody comes in and says, "I really love this one today, so let us do this one." And then 18 months later as the program goes forward, "but this is the latest and greatest thing." So therefore, we are going to do that one.
So the key is to make sure your project cycle, your delivery cycle, is shorter than the technology refresh cycle. Otherwise you will get into this, "That is great, but this is the neat thing today, so now let us do that."
And on the fourth one, again, on the technology side is making sure you have a disciplined development program, that you have professionals who are building—I hate to use the term, but it is more appropriate—in a factory. We are not building art products here. We are building industrial items that need to run consistently and reliably going forward.
So if you deal with those four major areas and you think about them as you design your project, you will meet your schedule and you will meet your cost parameters. If you lose any of those from the beginning, setting of the governance, to the end in terms of making sure you have a professional design team, if you don't have that, you will have problems.
Again, one of the reasons we reached out to SPAWAR was we see that professional design team, based upon their past practices, that they can bring what we unfortunately are missing in the VA. So hopefully that answered your question, sir.
Mr. BOOZMAN. Yes, sir. Thank you very much.
Ms. HERSETH SANDLIN. Thank you, Mr. Boozman. Mr. Scalise, you are recognized.
Mr. SCALISE. Thank you, Chairwoman Herseth Sandlin. In terms of the short-term and long-term goals, you do currently have a system, it is a COBOL system that runs your—is it just education benefits, is it all benefits for your current processes without Chapter 33?
Mr. WARREN. I believe you are referring to the BDN solution system. Yes, sir.
Mr. SCALISE. So what SPAWAR will be working on in the short term is going to be building some kind of additional segment to your current system for Chapter 33 benefits and that would be—what would be available by August of 2009?
Mr. WARREN. Actually, if I could, what we are using SPAWAR for is program management to assist as we do that short-term solution. But because we are spinning off of that existing BDN solution, we are using in-house VA IT resources. So we have taken the staff who built that system, who run that system, and said, "Your role is to basically give us a clone of what we have that has been modified to meet some of the financial needs for Chapter 33."
We are making sure that SPAWAR is focused on that long-term solution in terms of not dealing with the technologies that are 25 to 30 years old. We are using them to apply their knowledge and skill set for what the marketplace is using today in terms of something called service-oriented architecture, in terms of XML gateways, in terms of using the things we need to be building for the future.
So VA resources are being utilized to modify an existing system, a system that is actually very, very old, a legacy system that is hard to maintain today. So they are focused—
Mr. SCALISE. How old is that system?
Mr. WARREN. Probably older than I. Thirty—I mean if you look at it, it has been there for a while, it is one of the first ones. The VA was actually very creative back in the day in terms of bringing some automation to the day. Unfortunately we weren't able to move off of those systems. So we were great then. We sort of missed it going forward.
Mr. SCALISE. So the in-house people, SPAWAR won't be doing the actual modification of the short-term solution, they will be managing it. But they—as you gather the requirements, the process that you are almost finished with now, that will be turned over to SPAWAR. They will develop a plan to build a new system, a long-term solution, using newer technology to handle all benefits processing?
Mr. WARREN. One of the things we need to be very careful of, IT always overpromises. I mean, we have that unfortunate reputation. So what we have said is our focus is Chapter 33. We need to deliver Chapter 33 before we talk about anything else. And the focus we have on this project is to deliver those benefits for this program. And if I do a good job, if our folks do a good job, then Keith has said we will look at how to expand this system and utilize further. If it does not deliver, then we need to rethink our approach.
Mr. SCALISE. So for the long term there will be a new system that will be built for Chapter 33, but also—
Mr. WARREN. It will have the flexibilities into it such that—I am going to be optimistic—when we deliver the solution it has the flexibility into it to support Keith for the rest of the education program and then look at it as a model for how do we deal with the rest of the benefits delivered.
Mr. SCALISE. To pull those in later?
Mr. WARREN. Again, if we succeed, If we make sure we keep the flexibility in it.
Mr. SCALISE. Because I know there is a longer-term goal to have all VBA business lines paperless and under one system. I don't know if that is part of this, if that is a separate goal.
Mr. WARREN. We are using and we will be using and we are using what we have learned and what we do as part of Chapter 33 to inform how do we do that reengineering, if you will, of paperless benefits delivery at the VA. This would not necessarily be the system.
Mr. SCALISE. It would be flexible enough to incorporate that later, but that is not the primary goal of the long term.
Mr. WARREN. The goal is to make sure Chapter 33 happens. It is very easy to say we will do this and we will do this and do that. We are trying to make sure we keep focus on what is the goal. Chapter 33 is the goal, making sure those checks go out and making sure we get a system in place that supports Keith and the critical program that he has.
Mr. SCALISE. Okay. And then one of the previous concerns—I know VA, Veterans of Foreign Wars and maybe other groups had expressed about the initial plan to go to a private contractor was that all of the source code, the system itself, would be owned by the private company. In this new arrangement that you have with SPAWAR, will the VA own the source code and the system itself?
Mr. WARREN. Source code is almost an anachronism when you deal with the technologies we are talking about. The rules engine, the data structures that SPAWAR builds for us will come over to the VA and we will continue going forward with it. So source code is actually not something that is really relevant to what we are doing going forward. But the intellectual property that the VA owns in terms of what the business is, what the business rules are, how we do payment, how we manage it, that actually comes over to the VA. SPAWAR is building and installing the first system at their location in New Orleans. We will then do the second system at a VA location so we can train our staff on using that technology, and then we will do a flip over to VA being the primary location.
Mr. SCALISE. So you would ultimately be the owner?
Mr. WARREN. We will ultimately be the owner, sir.
Mr. SCALISE. All right. As then as far as educational benefits, I think you had answered this partially. Currently, is it somewhere around 500,000 benefits that you process with your current system?
Mr. WILSON. Yes. In terms of total program participation for all of the programs that we administer, it is about 520,000. What we are looking for specifically for just Chapter 33 is about a similar number for just Chapter 33, 520,000.
Mr. SCALISE. New—
Mr. WILSON. No. Most of those individuals will be individuals who previously drew benefits under one of two programs that we administer now, and that is the Chapter 30 Montgomery GI Bill Program for the active duty, or Chapter 1607, which is the Reserve Educational Systems program. The majority of those individuals will migrate to the new Chapter 33 benefit. Then we will have additional participation from new individuals.
Mr. SCALISE. Okay. Thank you. That is all I have.
Ms. HERSETH SANDLIN. Thank you, Mr. Scalise. Mr. Warren, I would like to follow up on a few things that you mentioned. You said one of the things, and it was a very helpful explanation in response to Mr. Boozman's question, that can get these things off track. You mentioned when the requirements change. Do you, or Mr. Wilson, have concerns on how we might be able to avoid the impact of certain changes to the requirements as it relates to proposals,? Particularly those being discussed in the Senate, to make some technical changes to the new benefit and how that will affect keeping things on track and on schedule.
Mr. WILSON. I can speak to it from the perspective of administering the benefit, and it would depend on the level of what an individual is referring to as technical changes. If the technical changes would be something, for example, along the lines of providing more specificity concerning how foreign schools are handled, that type of change would not be problematic. However, if it was a more significant change concerning eligibility criteria for the benefit itself, or potentially making the period of coverage for the benefit different than from August 1 forward, those types of changes would be problematic for successful implementation of the program.
Mr. WARREN. And they would be problematic for the system we have had to put in place for the short-term delivery in terms of the 1 August date. One of the design principles that we have laid out with SPAWAR is to make sure we break, if you will, the tyranny of the IT organization, so that as we build this system, rules changes are something that Keith's program managers can do. Today it probably takes five IT folks, a database programmer, and a whole bunch of other folks to make changes in code, versus actually using some of the newer technologies that get the IT folks out of changing what those rules are in terms of when the start is, what the amount is, and making sure it is in the controls of the program folks.
So the short-term package, again because of the age of the system that we are using, it will be difficult. But the thing that we are building for the long-term solution will have those flexibilities inherent in the design so that we are more flexible, more nimble, if you will, in accommodating changes in what the benefit is and the decisions that need to be made.
Ms. HERSETH SANDLIN. Am I correct in that the VA's original plan, before the new Chapter 33 benefit was
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