Good afternoon, the subcommittee will come to order. Thank you so much for your patients. We had things to take care of during the course of the day so many times we double schedule. We are here today to examine the pattern of problems at va. Gov affecting veterans benefit claims. The va aggressively build out va. Gov the past five years. Today it is more than a website. It is a selfservice platform for veterans to access the care and benefits theyve earned. Iov absolutely agree that veters should be able to manage their healthcare and benefits online rather than waiting on hold for the call center to do everything. To perform all those functions, va. Gov now interfaces with most of the systems we have discussed into previous hearings. Those systems interfaces have significant bugs and some of them are simply obsolete. Va. Gov has gaps, and veterans are falling into those gaps. Nearly 100,000 veterans that we know of have been struggling with the va. Gov bugs to access the benefits. In some cases, these problems have been happening for years. Va officials only recently discovered and disclosed that. In january, va notified the committee that about 32,000 veterans disability compensation claims submitted through the website had been rejected. This had been happening since 2018. The as reputation web site to alert the veterans that it happened again they thought everything was normal. They took the b. A. Seven months to send letters to notify them. Last month is intended by the deadline of the pact act was approaching 5600 veterans received their messages when they try to submit it on the web site. The va initially had no idea what was happening or that was happening. On top of that more than 56,000 veterans of requests to add remove dependence on the va. Gov predecessor were not processed. Causing them to be or underpaid. This has been happening all the way back from 2011. 56,000 is just an estimate in the department is trying to come up with a plan on how to address the situation. Each of these four incidents was somewhat different but they indicated troubling path. Well get to the bottom of what happened andme whether the glitches extendth beyond the benefits functions of va. Gov and another areas. This is a situation where the b. A. Is badly in need of independent oversight. The veterans need to know in our witnesses have thoroughly investigated the extent of the problems, and this is not just at the tip of the iceberg. The impact of veterans also need to hear from va much more quickly. Months and years his completely and acceptable. Seven months to mail letters to the veterans whose claims were rejected as unacceptable and the veterans who depend on an updated process deserve immediate help help. When the Va Central Office gets around to it is not an acceptable response. Ca. Govve is vital and we want to make sure its built on the solid foundation. I r appreciate her where this is joining us today to discuss how we are going to do just that and with that i would yield to Ranking Member for an opening statement. Many thank you mr. Chairman. V8. Gov gives veterans portals to accessing care and benefits. Its concerning when we hear theres an issue with this web site especially whenen Congress Learned three major issues in less than one month. In august va. Gov failed to keep up with what we all knew was going to be an influx of disability claims. Veterans have until 11 59 p. M. On august 9 or an intent to file a claim. Associate with the pact act to have potential va received so many submissions. Veterans began receiving error messages that cause confusion about whether their claim had been received or not. Earlier this month we learned over 56,000 veterans were negatively impacted by the web sites failure to process their status update and it took va over a decade to recognize an issue and as i understand that thee va doesnt have a full understanding of the impact of this issue on veterans in which veterans were affected. In the same notificationd we learned that theres an issue with va. Gov that has been preventing veterans from being able to appealin their claim whh is their right. Understand the va claims these issues affect a small percentage of veterans that we owe to our veterans to ensure that they alhave access to functional and Reliable Technology to access their care and benefits. I do want to say thank you to assistant secretary delbene and jacobs for the level transparency we have on the issues with va. Gov. Im not in i. T. Expert and i wont pretend i fully understand technology the technical aspects of the issue but i do understand how they are impacting veterans. I appreciate the office of information and technology being hyperfocused on not only getting the identified issues fixed. Establishing a process to ensure that any future issues identifiedfi. Im happy to hear and i will work with the chairman to ensure we hold the tuna. While we are talking about about va. Gov i want to talk about another issue with the web site compliance withh section 508 of the rehabilitation act of 1973 which continues to be an issue with vas web site. We have raised issues repeatedly with the b. A. And yet we continue to hear va. Gov fail to meet the needs of blind and low vision veterans. Especially as many veterans lost their vision due to conditions attributed to their military service. Wewe owe them the same level of access as their fighting colleagues. I hope we hear fromth todays witnesses about ensuring that this resource is available to all veterans equally and i look forward to todays testimony and i yield back. Thank you Ranking Member sheila cherfilusmccormick. I ask unanimous consent that mr. Luttrell and other members begin able to participate in this hearing. The objections ordered an object is the Veterans Affairs witnesses on our first and only panel today prefer first we have assistant secretary for Information Technology berteau binnie and chief Technology OfficerCharles Worthington and mr. Ray tellez the executive director of the business immigration and Veterans Benefits administration. As a witness to please stand at raise your right hand. Do you solemnly swear there penalty of perjury that testimony testimony were about to provide just the truth of full truth and nothingha but the truth. Id like to reflect that witnesses have answered in the affirmative. Mr. Delbene youre recognized for fiveto minutes to give your opening statement. Good afternoon members of the committee thank you for the opportunity to testify about the va. Gov webbe site. Is this committee is aware from her numerous meetings in my confirmation he is committed to providing Exceptional Care services and seamless unified experiences for veterans. These office of Information Technology collaborates with various offices to achieve this missiond and the delivery of stateoftheart Technology Including va. Gov modernized web site. Nearly 14 million unique veterans and others used the va. Gov each month to access information about the services and benefits provided. In august alone we had overnight teen million users. In the Health Care Space we are an Industry Leader in a veterans usage of our health care portal. The web site is designed as an intuitive navigation bennu to enable users to find information they need. Va. Gov project is one of the departments most Important Initiatives and for the first time in fees history comprehensive digital experience that provides veterans a single on line location to learn about the platform and manage their Va Health Care and benefits. Since its launch in 2018 va. Gov has achieved dramatic growth and usage and breadth of services on the platform. Said that nomars features to va. Gov during its highgrowth period for simple veterans can apply forr caregiver benefits ad requested that waiver review their debt and copayment balances plus scheduled Health Care Appointments and check in for those appointments. Integrating the various systems intoto va. Gov has not been witht challenges but as we practically notified you of september 5 to be a uncovered several technical issues impacting a small percentage of web sites which we are working hard to address. I want to be very clear despite the limited scope of these issues we view these problems as unacceptable. We at the va deeply apologize for the impact of veterans. We are working relentlessly to ensure its negatively impacted by ensuring veterans reach the Effective Date and respect theig submission timelines and forgiving any overpayment debts that may have been created due to the vas technical mistakes. Looking for the department is takingth immediate steps to prevent these issues are issues like this from happening in the future. The b. A. Roles or solve thesedu issues and prevent them from happening again address the more quickly when needed and most importantly make sure that all impacted veterans get the benefits and services that they deserve. Chairman royce and dell Ranking Member sheila cherfilusmccormick and members the committee thank you for the opportunity to appear before he put his image and va. Gov is one of the most Important Initiative amid tremendous growth in capability in the past. I look forward to continuing to work with the committee to address the greatest priorities of the challengesan we face in r transformation. I value your steadfast commitment and support for our veterans of this concludes my testimony and i look forward to your answers. Thank you mr. Delbene in a written statement of mr. Delbene will be entered into the record and i will recognize myself for five minutes. Mr. Delbene 94,500 Veterans Benefits have been delayed or disrupted because of va. Gov problems and i just didnt you are proud of the web site that the veterans are using but but s is 94,500 veterans and their families whose personal finances may be disrupted or maybe waiting for months or even years as we heard in the record already94 so for disability compensation. Mr. Delbene do you believe theres an accessible error rate in va. Gov and if so how would you define an acceptable error rate . Thank you for the question. I dont believe its acceptable for us to have errors that occur in the web site that process Veterans Benefits and ensure their intent. The challenges we are working on including an error that occurs in the system and make sure gets passed off to human being who can do the right thing in those cases. In that sense i dont think theres an acceptable error rate and more particularly i think every error that does occur is in software, errors will occur, we need to fix those errors and make sure that the trend is helped an appropriate way. Mr. Delbene what concerns me the most about the va. Gov i. T. Errors as it took 58 years to note that i want to hear more about your internal review and first and foremost how are you going to improve your ability to detect and solve these problems in realtime. Thank you for the question but im going to pass this on to charlesvi worthington. Thank you for the question. We are working urgently to create a comprehensive review of each of the products that va. Gov offer so he we can get a realtime sense of the error rates with all of the downstream services to deliver that feature. Something we haveto learned to s we did not have a fast enough facilities facility to identify these issues as they occurred enough to we are focused on with his First Priority of Getting Better monitoring setup. We made a lot of progress and michael since we announced it to you all could also benefit application warrants are in this dashboard and we have great sense for the. Success rate of these actions are indices at the time that it took to va to identify these problems is unacceptable where working hard toth make sure doesnt happen again. Back in the short answer to these questions we have identified four areas of having extensive problems and delays. Which ones are you addressing first and exactly how were you working in how many people do you have focused on those tasks . This is a Top Priorities for our va. Gov and to get a sense of the health of each of those products. We have a daily standup with a dozen or more folks logging progress and increasing monitoring of those systems. I think his image in the benefits application forms are already monitored and we are paying attention to the enrollment form which is the upcoming deadlines for special in rome at period. We are seeing positive results with that and is mr. Delbene said the ability to know with confidence that veterans submit an application on va. Gov that transaction will be honored even if there is a downstream error rate we are paying particular attention to those because we know those are the sorts thatt the two issues that led to the problem. Mr. Tellez what is a reasonable turn around time for disability compensation claims . Let me preface that assuming all the prop proper documentation is turned in. What do you think is a reasonable time . Thank you congressman for your question. Right now its 125 days but in the world we live in we are trying to get them processed as possible. I would say that would be the answer and we are taking steps to do that. Mr. Worthington have you found problems in credit extended to the other functions of the web site Like Health Care . We are looking closely at that question to identify if there were similar problems for the 526 plan errors. We did not identify anything on the scale. Veryel good. I will recognize Ranking Member cherfilusmccormick for five minutes for your questions. Thank you mr. Chairman. I want to be clear why did it take you so long to become aware of these issues . If i may thank you for the question. You have two separate bed into which issue we are talking about. In the case of princetons dependency applications to exchange early on in 2020 when there is identification of the issue because of the rules that were processing those having failure cases. At that point there was a processing put in place that is a rules processing error sheet that came out a report that came out in those where handled pay people to make sure the right thing happen. We thought at that point that was extent of the problem until we start hearing from veterans and vso said there were other issues coming up towards the end of the 2020 to in the beginning of 2023 so that longer period of time we did not think there was a broader problem. Once the broader problem was identified we set up a Cross Functional Team to tackle that issue and solve the existing problem. In that case that explains the gap gap in other cases it was a very rapid to to find issues to find issue so for instance of the claims application was found quite rapidly and resolved quite rapidly. The issue we had in august on the web site having errors we fixed that one quickly as well so it depends on the particular instance you are talking about. We are talking about the issue identified in professional notifications and i want to know can i get your commitment that any veteran who missed out on benefits because of the status issue willlk be whole and they will receive backdated benefits . If i may i will have handlee that one. You have our commitment and we are currently in the process of assessing those better goal willei be to make sure they get the benefits they have earned and deserve. And no veteran will receive a debt. That is the process we are working with us not to create a debt. Find the air that caused the debt. Im sure youre you are aware that we held a series of vso hearings every year the spring. Every year we hear from the Blind Veterans Association for david freese concerns of not only va. Gov but with the i. T. System and the recipients of care and benefits. Why has the v8 not met the mandate of section 508 specifically the va. Gov portal that accesses care benefits . We take five oa compliant seriously and i personally think its a commitment that we need to honor and up our work there. The first thing is va. Gov has a lot of content on it and that content can be separated into webpages. We have been making steady progress in identifying the most used webpages in of the most used pdfs in making sure they are compliant with five away. You take the v8. Co the functional part of it was built from the beginning to a framework that makes it accessible on line. As we move more functionality onto va. Gov we will inherit that accessibility but the one pivot we have changed us to target the most used whether its documentation or functionality as well. I think we are doing pretty well there. There is more for us to do. Know that we take the commitment of 508. What is your timeline for full implementation. I think the effort towards 508 will be an ongoing effort and if you take webpages we are in the 90 compliant in terms of essentially going from the most popular piece on down and some of the thornier issues are and spaces where theres custom logic and those are the ones that will take well. I meet with the teams every month to review our progress on this. Do you have a a gold they knw we could actually follow up on . Its a good question. What i would love to do is get into a regular dialogue with you so we can show your progress and we have an update for staffing on the 508 progress so if their specific questions we would love to talk about those in walk you through it. I would love to have regular engagement with you. Thank you and i yield back. Thank you Ranking Member cherfilusmccormick and now recognized representative self for five minutes of questioning. I want to go back to the 56,000. When the 21st discover this issue . Did i hear you say early 2021 . Mr. Tellez do you want, to take on the chronology of that . Thank you. We heard about it in november of 2021 that era issue by i. T. October of 2022 we discovered the 32,000 veterans. Im talking about the 57,000. It goes back to 2011. We discovered that in august of 2021 when we discovered there were a number of claims that were being rejected from the system so we provided team to investigate what the issue was. It wasnt until january of 2023 when we discovered it was maybe a bigger problem and we got feedback from call centers from veterans who are havingt. Challenges. Thats when we discovered it may be a different issue. Mr. Delbene what is a key way on this web site what is the Quality Assurance and what are your checks as we have an issue in 2018 that you finally started addressing in august of 2023. We havent issue from 2011 that you determined you finally found it in august of 2020 won a decade later so what is your Quality Assurance on their web site . Their people and my point is this, their people behind every i. T. System. We are talking about i. T. Systems as though they are autonomous assistants. They are not so what is your Quality Assurance for veterans because the chairman pointed out they just didnt follow up and nobody caught it. Where are the people in the system . In a typical scenario software is developed and will pass a qa test and approve production environment. Im not talking about preproduction. Im talking about when to get up and running who is doing the quality checks the percentage 10 check whatever who is doing that because that may be a question for mr. Worthington. Whos doing that check . It should not have taken a decade for us to find this if you had a qa process in place. Let me started now pass it to charles for more elaboration on it but many the systems we run are monitored and they are checking for any error conditions that occur in the particular cases we are talking about here these are places where those errors conditions were not caught by monitoring. We need it we meet every single day of the year and walk through any issues that occur in one of the questions i asked most often is was that error caught by monitoring or not . We need to do more monitoring of situations like this and we are constantly adding to that monitoring. It was a missed error check. Wewe just had to admit that. We can constantly prove it but theres more for us to do. You had the error checking place and it just didnt work. Not in these particular circumstances. I would add i think the challenge being countered with a dependency claim issue is the traceability of a transaction on the v8. Gov web site into the downstream system many of which are quite old. We did not have good traceability at this time on those transactions. Thats one of the things we are workingnd to address in this review. What we would like to happen is the ability to check for sure every transaction received on va. Gov has made it either into the system or can be automatically processed or if for whatever reason theres a failure theres a backup manual process. Okay so who is responsible for missing then quality checks in with the action taken against the person responsible for that . Are we holding anyone accountable for these errors . I think their multiple aspects in that answered charles and i would say we hold ourselves accountable for this and its our responsibility. Their errors like this we work hard to make sure they are right end in and you have told us accountable. I think we have tried very hard since ive started creating an environment in which i call embrace the read. You cant have them come into these meetings fearful for their jobs if they come clean on an issue. My time is up so i appreciate response but i think people need to be held accountable and Holding Someone accountable is not just saying you are accountable. It is sanctions against someone that missed this because in this case 56,000 veterans are paying the price. Mr. Chairman i yield back. Thank you very much representative the now now recognize representative luttrell for five minutes. Thank you mr. Chairman. Did anything happen to either one of you for this act against 56,000 veterans . Certainly if someone came to me and said we want a quick action they i just want verification from the self that nobody but you came down to your level and said because they errors there were made on 56,000 veterans that served her country and by the way thats 2011. Im just curious nobody has approached either one of you saying thate this was a proble . They definitely approached us and said this is a problem. Save that for no actions were taken whatsoever . Thats one of the problems with the va system and i appreciate what the va does as a whole but when you get to the granular level we have a problem with addressing the major issues of leadership and not being held accountable for things they do or do not do. They uphold their fiduciary responsibility to veterans like myself and like this gentleman here. The environment the culture that i have seen on the Senior Leadership in undersecretaryry mcdonough has been one of pushing for excellence in terms of execution and support. I agree and i think mr. Mcdonough has been a fantastic job at the question im asking is my concern is nobody is holding you responsible for this but you you were in charge but i will move on. If i may we are our own critics. We hold ourselves to incredible when i talk to veterans of my committee who may or may not been affected by this and askedwe me whos being held responsible in my supposed to save the va . So what happened to you . You are sitting here in front of me telling me that. Thats the problem we are trying to get pass. Thats a problem we had to go back to her base and say we are doing everything that we can to stream my this process. Are you a veteran sir forgive me. I go back to my face and i say 120 days they will lose their minds. Thats something we had to do rightez now because im asking u the question and answer you gave me to my question was 120 days. If i tell a veteran that who is in dire straits on the one that has the answer that question and i dont work for the va. Do you see the frustration here . That is rhetorical, dont answer. Ill move on. They are probably lot of veterans who are concerned that va may have lost their claims in filings over the past decades because of this va. Gov web site. Went to my what do our veteranse need to do to coursecorrect if theresth an issue . Thank you congressman for your question but i think right now they are concerned that they did file a claim that it dont see it when they check their status on va. Gov and if they dont sit there they can call the call center and we will look at that questionnaire. Acted back to my veterans until thenqu that the va made a mistake so you had to reengage instead of the va reach out to veterans saying hey we made a mistake and it wasnt your fault. We have done our reach with letters and we want to get actions on those claims as well. Which specific department in the va is handling that issue . Is that you directly . Its not me directly. There would be a contention in there somewhere. If the contention of our field operation. That could be leading that a named . I will be looking forward to market on line. Worcester worthington back to the i. T. Situation if you will be stated there has been lot of progress. Im pretty savvy when it comes to the iot space and what do you mean by that . The web site itself every year is seeing an increase in usage for example this past year we have had 64 million times were someone assigned into the web site which is up 50 in the Previous Year and that same platform we usedan to build va. V has allowed us to open which is on part with usaa in bank of america and what we are aspired to do to give veterans in experience that will match what they are getting a privatesector and though we are making progress these issues are top party. And thank you mr. Chairman i yield back. Thank you very much representative of the trail and for disclosure purposes im not a veteran and i appreciate your confidence in the work im doing here and i want to make sure Everybody Knows that. Everything i do here is focused on making sure that we do deliverno those benefits to the veterans, that they have. This is not a gift this is something they have learned and they are supposed to get them. As i was sitting here listening to that exchange and people saying i take accountability i agree with my two representative friends over here. Saying you take accountability and seeing the action fortitude dramatically different things. I saw problemspr taken place at Fort HarrisonVeterans Hospital in helena montana. Yi last year and to have an extensive analysis done d watt me to tell you what accountability is . We change the director. We had the director removed from Fort Harrison because she was not conducting the affairs properly. She was not the leader. She was allowing things to take place that should not have been taking place. That is accountability gentleman. Thats accountability. Mr. Tellez im glad to hear the pact act has been recognized and has been resolved and taking care of. I do want to make sure that each impacted veteran thats applying for anything is taking care of. When you consider every veterans appeal timely was unable to follow the notice of disagreement and you Start Talking about the disability benefits if its not timely are you going to recognize that . Let me clarify the question are you talking about the issue or the appeal related than it frankly and in any benefit whatsoever. If they have filed within the timeframe that they were supposed to and they did not have recognition given back to them to tell them the system didnt recognize them are you going to consider all of those is timely filings . We have 94,000 people that have made applications and somewhere along the line they were not recognize. A veteran always has a right to consider the system errors and we will consider this factor. Mr. Sub linew been making distinction between va. Gov and the systems interfaces underneath them. You acknowledge widespread technical problems. Veterans are trying to apply for benefits and getting error messages and are not interested in that does think schenn. They just know its a problem. They dont know if its va. Gov or the system underneath it. Ats problem is a problem to the. As in any problem with any system that touches the web site risk creating these errors . And not 100 sure i understandth that i will say any error that starts from the perspective of va. Gov regardless of what system it since two its the same sort of air and we should have had our veterans understand the distinction between vbms and va. Gov so i think im agreeing with you. Mr. Worthington youve been working with this distinction is sounds like trait are you parsing out if you will read that problem actually is an whether its on va. Gov or the system underneath or whether its the interface, the connection itself . Obviously it matters lot where the specific problem is if we are turned to solve it poor but for the veterans we need to make a clear simple explanation for what has gone wrong in this case so they dont have the understand the inner workings f the va. Mr. Delbene youve clearly known for while. Va. Com and other systems need a lot of work. Either you are just starting to understand how these different systems interacting create errors or youve known about it and you are just getting serious about attacking it. Can you break that down for me and whats going on . I joined in january of last year and ive talked with technical guys across the entire portfolio. There are over 1000 applications for these issues have come up along the way for them since we talked about the one that happened justte last month with the increase in traffic that went to the va. Gov web site. As the issues identified themselves we are tackling them as quickly as possible and ive been doing deepp dives into the portfolio to proactively and a dinner by those places but there are vulnerabilities that could show up. Acrosstheboard to appoint it shows this allowed modernization that needs to happen across the entire state that we take care of as part of va. I recognize Ranking Member cherfilusmccormick for a round of questions. Thank you mr. Chairman and my question is for mr. Delbene. What is your plan to ensure that the i. T. Used by the blind and low vision employees are except the blind support them doing their job and a followup question that we started on. Thank you for the question its a good one of their more couple facets of content so to speak that visually impaired folks need to be able to access their webpages and then they are the applications. Applications are fairly thorny because of the complexity involved and its not as objective and how you measure them. You have two take scenarios. So what we are doing is identifying the top most important applications that people need to use and then grading them based on a scale from a to f as how good they are to the present and sending criteria must fix issues before the application can get a prius. We have been doing this against the hrm working on and we will take that across the entire fleet of applications into point we recently delayeded the launch of their timesheet in them application just because 50 a eight complaint was not forget that it should be. What is your requirement for Software Vendors . We need to push that. Allowed cases as you know the applications are built by third parties so we need to set criterion have established criteria to find a musthave scenario that had to get fixes purge the ship criteria. When well be able to get those criteria . We can follow up with the other probably be better as a discussion than us in fact its a good question for 27. My concern is we are getting any real deadlines in anticipating when well startvi seeing changes and i havent gotten any set goals or requirementr either so lets make sure with established this so we are doing this over and over the years to come. I do want tono caution you getting to buy food complaints because of the breadth of the portfolio will be more of a journey than us being able to tell you in such and such a dae where five away compliant. We can talk to better progress in our goals and i welcome that conversation with you. Setting and meeting those goals is important. We should have midturn point and without this point we are moving with a target in mind and so 10 years later blair wondering. Next questions about where to put veterans for deployed to the combat zone from september 11 at of 2000 won to october 1, 2019 havees until 11 59 to directly d well let that be a health care regardless of whether or not they have applied for disability benefits. Mr. Delbene given the issues experience with the backdated benefits deadline august how confident are you that the views prepared for an increase in applications for the Health Care Access deadline . To think that the question. We have intensively scrubbed all aspects of what delivering the service means that let me pass it over to luttrell. Spend we are monitoring closely the flow for the 1010 Health Care Law metformin we have seen a big increase in applications. It just saw in the past 30 days if we are processed over 30,000 health care enrollments on va. Gov and that compares to 12,000 in june and 13,000 selected weve seen a big increase in the systems are holding up well. We are monitoring it intently as we approach the saturday deadline and thats something we are watching very closely and continue to monitor. So specifically its high . At this time i would say its high, yes. Thank you. Thank you Ranking Member cherfilusmccormick. Thank you mr. China want to go back to the 56,000 veterans. Mr. Tellez want to address three different categories of patterns that we might see. Are you going tome force veteras to pay back over payment . Thank you for your question. We will adjudicate those claims. How about veterans that are underpaid . Veterans that have paid back eroneous overpayments . We are looking at that absolutely as a result. Thanks so you are planning to proclaim it if you have the authority. I believe so, yes. Veterans have paid back some of their debt. They think what we are looking to is how we can do that. They bartik been forced to pay back theirso overpayments. What are you going to do with them . That is what were looking at. How many do you think it done that . I dont have that right now but i dont. I made misspoke and we are about erroneous debts here. Had theyve been forced to pay back erroneous debts . How many would that be . I dont have that assessment for you yet but we will work on getting that in addressing that 56,000 population and by october will be able to tell you in more detail what those numbers look like. We have been talking about process here which frustrates me because id love to talk about results in this process. Let me give you another process that we have been dealing with here in congress and that is the appeals process. The appeals board for along time has not been able to do its job in a timely manner so we have put in a bill to add two judges to the Appeals Court because the board wont act in an expeditious manner. The process that we are discussing here is frustrating to me because we dont seem to have results that we are trying to get at here. Mr. Chairman nye yield. Thank you very much. Ive recognized representative luttrell. Mr. Tellez to 32,000 veterans whose claims were lost and found in january, where were they foundd quicks. Think ill had to turn that to charles. The specific issue that occurred was between va. Gov and downstream system. Can you elaborate on what you mean by downstream paxman when a claim is processed by the claims processor there are a couple of interfaces between va. Gov and vbms to get that set up. What we have done in these cases , these 32,000, these cases there was an error in the establishment of the claims submitted on va. Gov. The same one on all 32,000 . Similar to the area that led to the claim not being accepted. The data associated with the claim. Which downstream system didnt pick it up next if its similar, said say it out loud. The exact nature ofof the errors there was a category for example there might have been a character in one of the bills submitted that wash not accept. . The original data in the va. Gov system weve been able to to retreat the full claims and thats what we are using to process it that we gave that rid the claim could begin the processing due to the technical areas. With the reworked multiple systems to be able to be read y va. Gov. Sample we have developed in this case is aboutit the process ratd this type of problem were to happen again rather than take the automated digital path we will create a version of the claim is at the veteran had mailed it and work it is a claim. One person is doing better the teen . The team. The system will automatically send a claim to our central portal just like any other claims submitted. Its a backup to the automated system. These 32,000 claims are being added onto all the other claims they are sitting in that file, correct . Its another add on . Just to be clear the intake portal has a finite number of things awaiting processing. Im not talking about the large set of claims that are in work. This is a particular portion correct . Exactly. So we need to address this. That sounds like a fair assessment. To pick up from charles we are processing mail and sixhour session to be an air thats inserted into my email portal then that goes into the normal and that the 32,000. We are working on those right and we have established 25,000 of those and of those we have made decisions on 14,000. We are taking action on those in reviewing them. These are claims that will double so the expectation is at this point we need to make sure previously picked matches what we have and take administrative action or adjudicate. We are working those 2000 now. What lets just do the math on this. What else are we missing . Its going to pop up because of one character whatever it mayy be. It will be a substantial number if i had to guess that the va has detail with. Are you directly in charge of the oversight to find these faults . We are looking at this category that was tied up in the 526 and across all of the va. Gov to see if their other places where something could be similar insofar we havent found a large number in anything we do find we will identify to make sure we dont have similar cases because of a claim or a form that has submitted. We are looking intently at that. I will close with this and mr. Mccormicks statement about mr. Stubbs delbene the reason the time might end date, maybe another issue i have with the va they dont want to put a timeline and will be a success. I find that frustrating. Im not trickling talking directly to you. There is no accountability if e go swimming past the at 1000 miles an hour. If you unpack this thing thats a human being we are talking about. Thats why its so important and thats what i want know exactly when its going to happen. We have threequarters of the way family fell short and we will keep going. Mr. Chairman nye apologize i went over. I yield back. Thank you very much representative. We will do a third lightning round. I think surplus of us have questions wed like to ask. Mr. Delbene let me ask about the benefit i. T. Impact and speaking about measurable deadlines and accomplishments and thats what i want to get to. We have over 130 million in projects that the va. Gov. How much of that money have we so far and what can you show us thats been accomplished . Measured success can you share with us . In terms the amount i should get back to because i need to get with the team at the Central Finance organization to find out. The process that we go through in a filing with basically lay out everything that we have investments for and laid out with the milestones are in terms of the existing architecture. I can probably come back and say this is where we are in the milestone. And thats exactly what i want to did like to see that spreadsheet. Heres how much money we have out at this and here is the success rate and hear the marks do we have hit to accomplish whatever task was laid out after thoseto funds. Thats the best way to communicate and to address these questions. Greatly appreciated. Representativeve self. Thank you mr. Chairman for the Construction Authority was taken away from the va several years ago. Should congress consider taking i. T. Authority away from the va so you can focus on health care. Would that be something to streamline vas focus strictly on the veteran as opposed to this very complex i. T. Problem . When you say take it away what did you have in mind . Well i dont know because the Construction Authority as my example wasve taken away and gin to the corps of engineers because of construction missteps in the past by the va. So to take it away from the va so some other organization would be responsible for i. T. So the va could focus on health care. How do we get va focused on 100,000 people who are falling through the cracks and how to be focused . I think that would be a mistake. That software is built in tight cooperation with stakeholders and the people who the suffering of people will build it. I suspected that would be your answer in my second real quick question im not an i. T. Guy. Ive used the term all of these things that seemeh to disappearo you have the cash system where were they still bear or are there some we dont know about . Can you find everything eventually or are they gone . I can answer that representative. We have a log of all of the form submitted on va. Gov which allow the two instruct those claims. Even the ones who were not dealt with . Thats correct. They were category of claims that were delayed because of a technical issue. Thank you mr. Chair and i yieldh back. Okay. Thank you to all the witnesses and you are . Excused from the witness table. We expect more from va. Gov and in the few years time we will go from a convenience that a minority that veterans see as a option. We have seen this banking and insurance in so many other businesses and industries. Most americans go to a building or call a dial center to handle their routine transactions. We are accustomed to doing it from the phone quite frankly. We expect to do things on the web site 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The expectedth transactions to e accurate and efficient. And recorded quite frankly. I absolutely agree that va. Gov is the front door of the department of Veterans Affairs and veterans day to have confidence in it. Committees focus on this issue will continue. We needd to see what has been accomplished up what is left to do at the end of the vas 90day review. My colleaguess and i understand clearly that the systems that process by benefits have been historically and thats why we want to upgrade these issues in the packce acts. In addition to the claims that will be coming through before anyone in the department never said a word about the glitches that we have been hearing about here today. The va must demonstrate the Funding Congress is providing forne the benefit i. T. Modernization plan are put to good use. Her witnesses can expect to be called on again as they work their way through the plan. With that i ask unanimous consent that all members have five legislative days to revise their marks. I invite Ranking Member cherfilusmccormick for any closing statements. Thank you mr. Chairman. I appreciate your testimony of her witnesses this afternoon and i recognized no i. T. Solution is perfect. There constantly evolving and changing and that evolution introduces i pursued the fact that assistant secretary delbene came today to a help with va. Gov. Important for us to hear from the leader accountable for these programs about the plan to address past issues and mitigate future problems to ensure that va i. T. System does not prevent veterans from accessing their care and benefits that they have earned. Thank you mr. Chairman and i yield back. Thank you Ranking Member cherfilusmccormick and with that i ask unanimous consent that all members have five legislative days to revise and extend their remarks including extraneous material. Without objection so ordered and the hearing is adjourned. [inaudible conversations]