“The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) plays a vital role in making sure Veterans’ claims for benefits are processed in a timely manner. VA’s plan to digitize federal records will improve service to Veterans and their families at both VA and NARA.”
The pandemic’s impact on the record request backlog
“The COVID-19 pandemic created a backlog of record requests at NARA and its record center in St. Louis, Missouri, the National Personnel Records Center (NPRC), which houses over two million square feet of paper military records. Mandated telework during the pandemic caused a backlog of NPRC record requests. According to William Bosanko, Chief Operating Officer at NARA, in his letter to the Department of Defense dated May 10, 2021, the records requests backlog has reached over half a million requests. VBA requests for records for disability claims processing are not included in this number. However, stalls in record retrievals have impacted access to some VA, state and local benefits that require these records.”
Pandemic Impact: VBA vs. NPRC
“VBA’s collaboration with NPRC during the pandemic reduced the backlog of claims-specific records requests from 80,000 to approximately 8,000, and today, NPRC is answering VBA requests within three to five days to support claims processing. Once VA digitizes a federal record, that record is uploaded to the Veteran’s file in the VBMS. The VBA fiscal year 2020 Annual Benefits Report shows VBA was able to continue to complete many claims throughout the pandemic.”
“NPRC receives requests from many other agencies and from Veterans, in addition to requests from VBA. Unfortunately, NPRC’s transition to a telework environment resulted in record requests that couldn’t be processed, and the NPRC records inventory grew rapidly. Congress addressed its concerns about the NPRC to the Archivist of the United States, David Ferriero, in a May 6 letter regarding the growing inventory. NPRC quarterly data shows how long some records take to get digitized.”
VA uses American Rescue Plan (ARP) to assist NARA and NPRC
“VA has aggressive plans to further improve claims processing timeliness by digitizing records supporting benefits determinations before a Veteran or survivor even files a claim for benefits. VA is using $150 million of its ARP grants to expand the scope of Federal scanning to reduce claims processing delays and reduce the current claims backlog by half. In addition, VA will provide digital copies of all scanned records to NARA to help expedite pending and future requests for any Veteran records.”
“VA and NARA have collaborated to build an on-site scanning capability for immediate scanning of records responsive to pending claims, with a plan to scan several million records by September 2022…” Read the full article here.
Source: VA and NARA to digitize federal records for Veterans – August 5, 2021. VAntage Point.
