The VA continues to lack assurance that it is meeting its claims processing accuracy and backlog elimination goals, an IG report has said in a review of an initiative spurred by one of the major criticisms of the department’s services to veterans.
Costs for the Veterans Benefits Management System increased from about $580 million to $1.3 billion from September 2009 to January 2015, due to inadequate cost control, unplanned changes in system and business requirements, and inefficient contracting practices, it said.
“As a result, VA could not ensure an effective return on its investment and total actual VBMS system development costs remained unknown. Amid evolving requirements, VBMS did not fully provide the capability to process claims from initial application to benefits delivery. Users lacked training needed to leverage the enhanced functionality provided. System response-time issues resulted from rapid software enhancements while system disruptions were due to inadequate service continuity practices,” it said.
The report recommended that VA define and stabilize system and business requirements, address system performance problems, deploy required functionality to process claims end-to-end, and institute metrics needed to identify and ensure progress toward meeting the goals.
