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 issu