As part of the continuing efforts to wrestle its byzantine and unwieldy claims-processing system into a manageable level, the Department of Veterans Affairs has unveiled plans to fully automate application procedures. "Automation will substantially reduce processing time and increase accuracy, while simplifying the way veterans interact with the claims process," the agency said in a July 2 statement. The new system will be available to veterans who claim they have B-cell leukemia, Parkinson’s disease, or ischemic heart disease due to exposure to the herbicide Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. The first users should have access to the system, which will guide them through the claims-application process step by step, later this year. At that point, the regulation designating those Agent Orange-related maladies as service-connected should be in effect, the VA says.