“Long beset by a reputation as a slow-moving bureaucracy, the Department of Veterans Affairs is currently undergoing a renaissance in its handling of benefit claims. The product of two years of ongoing development, the newly released Digital Compensation Claims Tool represents an era in IT innovation across the VA aimed at radically streamlining the process through which America’s veterans receive compensation and health care.”
“Irrespective of the nature or duration of service, any U.S. veteran who has sought benefits from the VA has navigated a time-intensive application for determining the validity of their submission. The disability claims process involves connecting incidents from a veteran’s service to resulting disabilities or health conditions, a verification chain that typically required no less than two months to adjudicate. Instead, the Disability Compensation Claims Tool circumvents weeks of paperwork review — completing the same task in a matter of minutes.”
“This newfound agility in the VA claims process is in part the result of a database known as the Official Military Activities Report (OMAR). A collaboration between the VA, the Defense Department and Andrew Shaver of the Political Violence Project, OMAR brings together all records of kinetic engagement between U.S. soldiers and their adversaries (known as significant actions, or SIGACTs) from 1963 to the present. As a result, VA claims adjudicators are able to link a veteran’s personal information with digitally integrated DOD records, validating their claim almost immediately.” Read the full article here.
Source: VA Radically Streamlining Claims Process With New Tool – By Adam Patterson, June 28, 2019. GovernmentCIO.
