Aug 29: VBA's "Transformation Plan" by General Hickey

VBA's Transformation Plan

VBA is responding to the significant expansion in the scope and complexity of its mission. While VA completed a record-breaking 1 million claims per year over the past three years, the number of claims received continues to exceed the number processed and the backlog of claims has grown.

In response, VA is implementing a comprehensive Transformation plan—a series of people, process and technologyinitiatives—to increase productivity and accuracy of disability claims processing. Once the Transformation is fully implemented, VA expects to systematically reduce the backlog and reach its 2015 goal - to eliminate the claims backlog and process all claims within 125 days with 98 percent accuracy.

VBA Compensation Benefits
There are currently 3.9 million Veterans receiving disability benefits from VA. In the past four years, VA has added more than 940,000 Veterans to the VA compensation rolls, more than the active duty Army and Navy combined. In fiscal year 2012, VA delivered $54 billion in compensation and pension benefits.

Transformation Initiatives include: 
• Fully Developed Claims (FDC)
• Veterans Benefits Management System (VBMS)
• Acceptable Clinical Evidence (ACE)
• Segmented Lanes

Read Under Secretary Allison Hickey's March 2013 SVAC Testimony:A Review of VA's Transformation Efforts (PDF).

Read Under Secretary Allison Hickey's March 2013 HVAC Testimony:
Focusing on People, A Review of VA’s Plans for Employee Training, Accountability, and Workload Management to Improve Disability Claims Processing (PDF).

Office of Business Process Integration's September 2013 Event: Initial Development Industry Day (PDF).

• Strategic Plan (PDF)–Department of Veterans Affairs' plan to eliminate the Compensation claims backlog.

• Transformation roll-out–VBA’s roll-out is a sweeping, multi-faceted, major change in benefits delivery.

• End State–elimination of the backlog while raising quality standards.