Transcripts For CSPAN2 Hearing 20240703

Roughly 100,000 veterans and their dependents. The Committee Also touched on modernization efforts and improved website access for the blind and visually impaired. This is one hour. Good afternoon. Subcommittee will come to order. Thank you so much for your patience. As you all are where we all have many tasks that we have to take care through the course of the day so many times they double schedule. We are here today to examine pattern problems with v. A. Gov affecting veteransby benefit claims. V. A. Aggressively build out v. A. Gov over the past five years. Today it is more than a website. The selfservice platform for veterans to access the care and benefits that they have earned. I absolutely agree that veteran should be able to manage their health care and benefits online rather than waiting on hold with the call center to do everything. But to perform all those functions va. Gov now interfaces with most of the systems we have discussed in previous hearings. Those systems and interfaces have significant bugs, and some of them are simply obsolete. Va. Gov has gaps, and veterans are falling into them. Nearly 100,000 veterans that we know of have been struggling with the va. Gov bugs to access their benefits. In some cases these problems have been happening for years, but va officials only recently discovered and disclosed them. 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 website didnt alert the veterans that an error had happened, so they thought everything was normal. They just, they just, this is unbelievable. They just chalked it up to v. A. Being slow on the delivery of their benefits. They never even called, inquired, or complained about it. Thats of v. A. s reputation is. Website did not look the veterans and air had happened. Again, they thought everything was normal. It took theed v. A. Seven monthso send letters to notify them. Then, last month, as the intent to file deadline under the pact act was approaching, around 5,600 veterans received error messages when they tried to submit on the website. Va initially had no idea it was happening. On top of that, more than 56,000 veterans request to add remove dependence on the va. Gov and its predecessor were not processed, causing them to be overpaid or underpaid. This has been happening all the way backk to 2011. The 56,000 is just an estimate at the department is still trying to come up with a plan on how to address the situation. Each of these four incidents were somewhat different of the indicate a troubling pattern. Were going to get to the bottom of what happened and whether the glitches extend beyond the benefits function of va. Gov and into other areas. This is a situation where the v. A. Is badly in need of independent oversight. The veterans need to know that our witnesses have thoroughly investigated the extent of the problems, and this is not just the tip of the iceberg. The impact of veterans also need to hear from v. A. Much more quickly. Months and years is completely unacceptable. Seven months to mail letters to the veterans whose claims were rejected is unacceptable. And the veterans who depend on updates for the process deserve immediate help. When the v. A. Central office gets around to it, is not an acceptableje response. Va. Gov is a vital and we need to make sure it is built on a solid foundation. I i appreciate eyewitnesses doig us today to discuss how were going to do just that. With that i would you do Ranking Member cherfilusmccormick for a brief statement. Thank you, mr. Chairman, thank you to the witnesses for being here today. Va. Gov issc veterans primary portal to access to care and benefits they have earned through their service to our country. So it is concerning when we hear that there is an issue with this website. Especially when congress learns of three major issues in less than one month. In august va. Gov fail to keep up with what we all knew was going to be a massive influx of disability claims. Veterans had until 11 59 p. M. On august 9 to 9th to submit their claims, or an intent, or intend to file a claim associate with the pact act to any potential benefits backdated to when the bill was signed in august of 2022. 2022. The a receipt so many submissions that broke the websites ability to process come to process in their betters began receiving error messages that cause confusion about whether their claim had been received or not. Then earlier this month we learned that over 56,000 veterans are potentially negatively impacted by the websitesen failed to process veterans dependent status update. Update. And that it took v. A. Over decade tont recognize and fix ts issue. As i understand it v. A. Still doesnt have a full understanding of the impact of this issue on veterans in which veterans were affected. In the same notification we also learned that there is an issue with va. Gov that has been preventing veterans from the able to appeal their claim decision, which is the right. I understand the v. A. Claims that if these issues affect a small percentage of veterans, but we owe it to our veterans to ensure that they have access to functional and Reliable Technology to access their care and benefits. I do want to say thank you to assistant secretary delbene day and undersecretary jacobs for the level of transparency they have provided on the recent issues of the va. Gov. Im not an i. T. Expert so i wont pretend i fully understand the Technology Aspects come Technology Aspects of the issue i do understand how their impacting Veterans Drive appreciate the das office of information and technology seems to be hyper focused on not only getting these identified issues fixed but establishing a process ensure that any future issues identified andin fixed more quickly. I am happy to hear this and will work with theid chairman to ense that we hold you to it. While we are talking back v. A. Com, i do want to talk about another issue withy the website. Ha complies with section 508 of the rehabilitation act of 1973 continues to be an issue with v. A. s website and i. T. Solution. We have raised this issue repeatedly with v. A. And that we continue to hear that va. Gov fail to meet the needs of blind and low vision veterans. This is disappointing especially as many of these veterans lost their vision you to conditions attributed to their military service. We owe them the same level of access as their sighted colleagues are i hope you from todaysnt witnesses about a plan tora ensure that resources are to all veterans equally. I look forward to todays testimony, and i yield back. Thank you. Thank the Ranking Member. Before briefs the i ask any of the members about dallas subcommittee be permitted to participate in this hearing. Without objection, soan ordered. I will now introduce the Veterans Affairs witnesses on our first and only panel today. First with assistant secretary for information and technology kurt delbene eight. We also have chief Technology Officer Charles Worthington, and finally we have mr. Ray tellez executive director of the office of business integration in the Veterans Benefits administration. I asked the witnesses to please dan and raise your right hand. [witnesses were swornex in] thankt you and let the recod reflect that all the witnesses have answered in the affirmative. Mr. Delbene, youre no recognized to delivering Company Statement of behalf of the panel. Good afternoon chairman rosendale, Ranking Member cherfilusmccormick and members of the subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify about department of Veterans Affairs va. Gov website. I am a company today as you noted by mr. Ray tellez v. A. s chief Technology Officer and executive director of the office of businessy integration from e Veterans Benefits administration. As this committee is aware up from numerous meetings has by confirmation, vas committed to providing exceptional care, services and a seamless unified experience to our veterans. Das office of information and Technology Collaborates with various offices, the officer achieve this mission through the delivery of state of the Art Technology including va. Gov, modernize website and das digital front door. Nearly 14 millions unique veterans andis others use va. Gov each month to access information about the services and benefits provided by the department. In august alone we had over 19 millionne unique users. In Healthcare System particularly iron Industry Leader in our veterans usage of our healthcare portal. The website is designed with a clear and intuitive navigation menu enabling users tous quickly find the information that they are seeking. Va. Gov project is one of departments most important initiatives and for the first time in the v. A. Is history gets a comprehensive digital experience that provides veterans a Single Online location to learn about, apply for, use, manage their v. A. Healthcare and benefits. Since its relaunch in 2018 va. Gov has seen dramatic growth. Both in usage and the breadth of Services Offered on the platform. V. A. Has added numerous futures to va. Gov during its highgrowth period. For example, veterans cannotnc apply for caregiver. Benefits, appeal, requested that waiver and view their debt and copayment balances can request an schedule healthcare appointments and even checking for those appointments on their day of service. Integrating the various legacy systems in the va. Gov is not been without challenges. As we proactively notified you on september 5, v. A. Recently uncovered several technical issues impacting a small percentage of the website traffic. Which we are working very hard to address. I want to be very clear that despite the limited scope of these issues we view these problems as unacceptable. We at the v. A. Deeply apologize to the impact of veterans. We are working with relentlessly to ensure no veteran is negatively impacted by these technical issues by ensuring veterans receive Effective Date that respect their original submission timeline, and for giving any overpayment debts that may have been created due to thera das technical mistake. Moving from the department s taking immediate steps to prevent this issue or issues like this from happening in the future. The able resolve these issues can prevent the mapping again, dressing more quickly when needed and most important make sure that all impacted veterans get the benefits and services that they deserve as quickly as possible. Chairman rosendale, Ranking Member cherfilusmccormick, and members of the subcommittee thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. As an agent va. Gov is one of the departments most important initiatives and we made a great deal of progress amid tremendous growth and capability and capacity. We look forward to continuing to work with the subcommittee to address our greatest priorities and the challenges we face in our digital transformation. Og we value your steadfast commitment and support for our veterans. This concludes my testimony and we look forward to answering your questions. Thank you mr. Delbene. Your statement will be entered into the hearing record. We will now proceed to question and i will recognize myself for five minutes. Mr. Delbene, least 94,500 Veterans Benefits have been delayed or disrupted becausein f the va. Gov problems. I understand youre very proud of the website and millions of veterans that use it, but this is 94,500 veterans and their families whose personal finances may be disrupted or who may be waiting for months or even years as weve heard in the record already for disabilityy compensation. Mr. Delbene, do you believe there is unacceptable and rate in va. Gov . And if so, what would you define as unacceptable error rate . Thank you for the question. I do believe that there is acceptable for us to have errors that occur under website that are not processed in way that benefits veterans and assures their intent. So by that, in one of the places where we have challenges we are working on is when an error occurs in system, make sure it gets passed off to human being who can do the right thing in those cases. So in essence i dont think theres unacceptable error rate, and more particularly i think every error that does occur because its software, errors will occur, we need to come one, fixes errors, and two, we need to make sure that the veteran is handled in the appropriate way. So mr. Delbene, what concerns me the most about the va. Gov ib errors is that it took the v. A. Years to notice that i want you more about your internal review of the causes but first and foremost how are you going to prove their ability to detect and solve these problems in real time. Thanks for the question im going to pass this one to Charles Worthington our cto and have them take that one on. Thanks for the question. We are working right toprpr urgy to create a comprehensive review of each of the products va. Gov offers the we can get a realtime sense of the error rates with all of the downstream services reintegrate with two delivery of food feature. Something we learned as a result of this incident and we dont have at fast if you dont identify these issues as a occurred and thats what were really focus on with his First Priority of Getting Better monitoring setup. We have made a lot of progress on that goal since we announced that to you all. All of the benefit application forms are now in this dashboard with a great sense of what the success rate of each of those downs stream transactions are. We do that as you said the time that it took to identify those problems proactively was unacceptable and we working hard to make sure that doesnt happen again. So mr. Worthington, as youre answering his questions let me ask you. We have identified for the areas that have extensive problems and delays. Which ones are you addressing first, and exactly how are you working how many people do you focused on those tasks . This is a top priority of our va. Gov team to get better sense of the help of each of the problems. We got a daily standup with a a dozen or more folks talking about the progress in increasing the monitoring of those systems. As a niche in the benefits applications forms are already monitored. Were also paying a lotth of attention to the Health Enrollment form which has is upcoming deadline of september 30 for the special Enrollment Period back. We are seeing positive results with that and i think as mr. Ability toid, the know with confidence that once a veteran has hit submit on application on va. Gov that that transaction is going to be honored even if there is a downstream air. We are paying particular attention to those because we know those ofen the source of te two issues that led to a potential delay. Mr. Tellez from what you think is a a regional tournamt time for disability compensation claim . Let me preface that with assuming that all the proper documentation is turned in, okay . All the proper document he is turned in. What do you think is a reasonable time for a disability claim. Thank you for your question. Right now we defined as under 125 days but in what i live with how to get those processes as quick as possible because thats the expectation veterans have n the real world. I would say that would be the edge as quick as we can. With a different programs to do that. I hope that answers your question. Mr. Worthington have you determined the extent of the benefits related va. Gov problems and whether the extent into the other functions of the website like healthcare . We are looking very closely at that exact question to identify if the rainy similar problems such as the dependency claim with a 526 great errors. We batted in fight anything on that skill but that is something we look at very intently. Very good. Okay, i am down to it. I will recognize Ranking Member cherfilusmccormick for five minutes for your question. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I wanted to get back to the timeliness issue that you touched upon. I want to be clear. Why did it take you so long to become aware of the issues . If i may, thank you for the question. You haveuc. To separate that io which particular issue were talking about. So in the case of, for instance, dependency application to change, early on in 2021 there was an identification of an issue because the rules for processing those as having failure cases. And at that point there was actually a processing that was put in place, actually a rules processing parachute that came out how to report the came out and those were all manually handled by people to make sure the right thing happened we thought at the point that was extent of the problem until we started hearing from veterans and vsos there were other issues, up, that was towards the end of 2022 the very beginning of 2023. So that longer period of time we actually did not think there was a broader problem. Once a broader problem was identified we set up a Cross Functional Team to go20 tackle that issue and so the bug that we did then determined that existed there in the case that can explain 20 get. In other cases it was very rapid to find issue. For instance, the claims application, that was found quite rapidly and resolved quite rapidly. Te the issue we had in august of the website having errors, we fix that went very quickly as well. Socl it really depends upon the particular instance youre talking about. We would talk about the issue identified in september 5 in the congressional notification, which you touched upon. I also want to know, can i get your commitment that any veteran who missed out on the benefits because of the status issue will be made whole and that they were received those backdated benefits . If i may i will have ray handle that one. Thank you, congresswoman. Yes, you of our commitment. We are in the process of assessing those but our goal will be to make those veterans whole initiative to the benefit they learned and have deserved. And november received a debt because the i. T. System failed . That is a process where working from is not to create a debt because of the issue with the error that may have caused the death. Mr. Delbene, im sure youre aware that we held a series of vso hearings every year in the spring. Every year we hear pleas from the Blind Veterans Association for betterr oversight of section 508 compliance. They have raised concerns about not only va. Gov but also with the i. T. System that veterans use both as recipients of care and benefits and as a pleasant v. A. Why has the v. A. Not met the mandate of section five 08 . Specifically the va. Gov portal the veterans were allowed to access the care and benefits . We take 508 compliance very seriously. I personally think it is a commitment that we need to honor and actually an up our work there. Let me break it into a couple of different parts. The first scene is va. Gov has a lot of content on it. That cut it can separated into webpages or a lot of pdfs. Weve been making steady progress in action identifying the most used webpages and the most use pdfs in making sure that they are complying with 50 508. If you then take the va. Gov the functional part of it is actually was built from beginning to a framework that makes it accessible to the blind. As we move for and more functionality onto va. Gov, we will inherit that accessibility. The one vivid is to target the things that are most use, whether its documentation or whether it is fortunately as well. I think were doing pretty well there. Theres more for us to do but know that we take the commitment of five 08 incredibly seriously. What is your timeline for full implementation or even substantial completion . I think that the effort towards five oh it will be an ongoing effort. I think we are if you take webpages for instance, were in the 90 compliance in terms of the number ofen hits that happen or essentially going from the most popular pages on down pick some up authority for your issues on application spaces where theres custom logic. Both of theli ones that are goig to take a while. I meet with the team at the above to review our progress on this. Do you have a goal date, a range we can follow up on . Its a good question. I would love to do is get into a regular dialogue with you so i can show you our progress. I think we actually have an update for staffing on by the way progress onth the 27th. 508 we would love to talk you through it but i would love a regular engagement on the. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I yield back. Thank you, Ranking Member cherfilusmccormick. I will now recognize mr. Self for five minutes of questioning. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I want to go back to the 56,000. When did you first discover this issue . Did i doer you say early 2021 . Mr. Tellez, you want to take the chronology onth that one . We first heard about i believe in august, november of 2021 of that era issue was brought to us by i. T. October of 2022 we discovered20 the 32,000 veterans i talk about the 57 my apologies. Goes back to 2011. Yet. We discover that in august of 2021 is when we discovered there was a number of defenses he claims that were being rejected from the system. We set up an investigation to see what the issue was. It wasnt until january 2023 when we discovered there was maybe a different problem a bigger problem and when we get feedback from all sinners m veterans who are having challenges on dependencies were not on the list we have. Thats when we discovered maybe there was a different issue with that. So mr. Delbene, what is the qa on va. Gov come on this website . What is the Quality Assurance . What are your checks . Because we have an issue from 2018 that you finally started addressing in august of 2023. We have an issue from 2011 that you determined you finally found it in august of 2021, a decade later. So what is your Quality Assurance on your website . There are people, and my point is this, our people behind every i. T. System. We are talking i. T. Systemsth he as though you are autonomous systems. They are not so what is your Quality Assurance for veterans . Because as a chairman pointed out they just didnt follow up and nobody caught it. Where are the people in this system . So on, in the typical scenario software get depot by developers and passed with full qa test in a preproduction environment speed is im not talking about the preproduction on talking about what you get it up and running, who is doing the qualityy checks can the percentage check, a 10 check him whatever . Who is doing that . That may be a question for mr. Worthington but 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 start and i will definitely pass it to charles for more elaboration on it. But any of the systems that we run are monitored and have telemetry on them. So theyrees checking for any error conditions that occur. In the particular case and we are talking about here these are places where those error conditions were not caught my monitoring. We meet every single day of the year andnd walk through any isss that occur. One of the questions i asked most often is, wasnt there a cause by, or check, i or not . We need to do more monitoring of situations like this and we are constantly adding to that monitoring but in this particular case it was a missed error check. I just can we have to admit that. We constantly improve it but theres more for us to do. So you haveio the error check in place, it just didnt work . It did not hit these particular circumstances. Charles . I would add i think the challenge we encountered with dependency claim issue is that the traceability of a transaction from the va. Gov website into the downstream systems many of which are quite old, we do not have good traceability at this time of those transactions pick this one of the things were working to address as a part of the systematic review. What would like to is an ability to check for sure that every transaction that is received on va. Gov has made it into the downstream system that isnt to do so it can be automatic the process, or if for whatever reason there is some failure that theres a backup sort of manual process. Okay. So who was responsible for missing the quality checks, and was or action taken against the person responsible for that . Are we holding anyone accountable for these errors . So i think theres multiple aspects in the edge. First i think charles i have posted we holdpe ourselves accountable for this. Its our responsibility at the end of the day and if our errors like this, one, we work hard to make sure their right, but at the end you have to hold us accountable. Second, we have tried very hard in the team since i have started of creating an environment, i coined the phrase embrace the red. You can have teams when you come into the status meetings fearful for their jobs if they come clean on an issue that occurs. My time is upside appreciate your response, but i think that people need to be held accountable. 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. Chairman, i yield back. Thank thank you very muc. I will now recognize for five minutes of questioning to follow on, did anything happen to either one of you for this, i would say egregious act against 56,000 veterans . You are to be held responsible, heard you say that, sir. Right. I would certainly if somebody came to me and said we want to take action, that obviously i understand get clarification from a sump and mr. Self and nobody above you came down into your level and said because of these errors that were made on 56,000 veterans who served the country, by the way, thats 2011. Thats right when the iraqis were withdrawing down. Im just curious, nobody has approached either one of you saying that this was a problem . Theyve definitely approached us us and said this isgh a problem. No i greatly appreciate with the v. A. Does as all but when you get down to the grander level i think with the problem with addressing the major issues in literacy for not being held accountable for things that they do or do not do and uphold their fiduciary responsibility to veterans like myself come like a settlement here in like that gentleman over there. If i may respectfully, the environment and the culture that ive seen among the Senior Leadership in, under secretary mcdonough has been one of pushing for excellent in terms of execution but support i agree. I think mr. Mcdonough has been the rest ofjob at the question im asking. The question as he is my concern is a was wholly responsible for this. You said you inte charge of it t i will move on. If i may just one that i think this is true for mr. Worthington as well. We are our own worst critics in cases like this. We hold ourselves to an incredible when i called a talk to the veterans of my committed the mayor not have been affected by this and that as he has been held responsible a spouse is a the v. A. . I think a specific the v. A. And the people on my team. So what happened to you . Nothing. Zeroveof figure sitting heren front of a telling me that. Thats the problem with tryingg to get past. Thats a problem that we had to go back to our base and say we are doing everything that we can to streamline thisen process. Mr. Tellez, 120 days are you a veteran . Forgive me if i go back to my base and is a 120 days they lose their mind. Thats just something we have to do right now because im asking you the questions and the question, the edgy gibby is 120 days. If i go tell a veteran that, who is in dire straits, im the one that has answered the question or i dont work in v. A. See the frustrations here . Thats rhetorical. Dont answer it. But ill move on. Mr. Tellez, theres probably, theres probably a lot of veterans were concerned that he might have lost their claims and filings over therh past decade because of this va. Gov website, their experience. What do my veterans come what you are veterans need to do in order to course correct if there is an issue . Thank you, congressman for your question. I think right now if they are concerned that the did file a claim of the dont see when they checked the steps of the current va. Gov then they can call or check va. Gov. They dont see it there and they can call the call center. We will certainly address that question. Had to go back to my veterans until then that the apostle he made a a mistake so you, the better, need to reengage instead of theno v. A. Reaching out to te better as a hey, we made a mistake and we want to fix this, it wasnt your fault . We have done some outreach thompson somebody. We takeve action on those claims asll well, both for five to six issue for disability claims and for the defense he claims as well. We will send up speed in which specific department the a is handling that issue . Is that you directly. Was not directed but vba handling that. It wouldnt bvp as all they would either the contingent in there somewhere. Probably combination of our th operations and a policy and oversight division. Who would be leading that . I need a name. I i can get you an answer il be looking for it by tomorrow if you dont want. I dont mind atas all. Mr. Worthington, back to the i. T. Situation if you will. You stated this been a lot of progress. I am pretty savvy wheng it coms to the iot space. What you mean by that . Sure. The website itself every year acing an increasing amount of usage. For example, this past year we had 64 million times where somebody has signed into the website which is up over 50 from the previous year. That same platform used to build va. Gov has enabled us to recently to launch the v. A. Flagship mobile app, health and benefit small app thats been downloaded 1. 8 million times and has 4. 8 star rating in the Apple App Store which is on par with usaa and bank of america, thats what we aspire to do is to give veterans and expensive will match with the getting in the private sector. We feel were making progress at that go about these issues obviously our top party. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, i yield back. Thank you very much. Just for disclosuree purposes,i am not a veteran, so i appreciate your confidence in the work that im doing here. To make sure Everybody Knows that everything that i do here is focus on making sure that we do deliver those benefits to the veterans, that they have earned, okay . This is not a gift. This is something they earned and is supposed tohe get that. As im sitting here listening to that exchange and about people saying, i take accountability, i agree with my two represented friends over here. Saying that you take accountability and seeing the action for it are two dramatically different things. I saw problems taking place at Fort Harrison in helena, montana. Last year and worked with secretary mcdonough to have an extensive investigation and analysis done and you let me tell you what accountability is . We change the director. We had the director remote from Fort Harrison because she was not conducting affairs properly. She was not a leader. She was allowing things to take place at should never been tg place, okay . That is accountability, gentlemen. Thats accountability. Mr. Tellez, i am really glad to hear that the 560 veterans whose intent to file underta the pact act that were not received action have been recognized and that that is been resolved. The event taken care of. I do want to make sure that each impacted veteran thats applying for anything is it taken care of. Will you consider every veterans appeal timely who was unable to file a notice of disagreement when we Start Talking about the disability benefits and things like that . If its not time are you going to recognize that . Clarify your question. Are you talking of the indo d issue or a fuel related to the speed is quite frankly, any benefits whatsoever. If they have filed and there found within the timeframe that he was supposed to they did not have recognition given back to them to even tell them that the system didnt recognize that. Are you going to consider all of those as timely filings . Weve got 94,000 people that have made applications and summer along the line they were not recognized. I think veteran always has a right to appeal. We will consider the system errors as we consider that appeal and we adjudicated absolutely we will consider this as one of those factors. Mr. Delbene, you been making a distinction between va. Gov which you believe is great and assistant interfaces underneath va. Gov which you acknowledge widespread technical problems. Veterans are trying to apply for benefits and getting error messages obviously im interested. They just know its a probert did on whether the. Gov over the system that is underneath of it. They problem is a problem to denver doesnt any problem with any system attaches a website risk creating these errors . Im not 100 sure understand which direction youre heading but i will say that any error that starts from her effective of va. Gov regardless of what system it dissenting to come yes, they will think about is the same sort of error. We shouldnt have to our veterans understand the distinction between conferences vbms and va. Gov. So i think im agreeing with you. Youve been working with a lot more this distinction is sounds like, okay . Are you parsing out if you will wear that problem actually is, whether its on va. Gov or whether it is a system underneath, or whether its the interface, okay, the connection. Yes. For our team and matters a lot where the specific problem is because were trying to go solve it. But for the veterans your point, we are not tried to explain to them where the system failure is. Is. We just need to make a very clear simple explanation for what has gone wrong in any given case soe that they dont have o understand the inner workings of the v. A. Mr. Delbene, you clearly have known for for a while that v and other systems it touches need a lot of work. Either you are just starting to understand how these different systems interact and create errors, or you have known about it and youre just not getting serious about tackling it. Can you break that down for me . Whats going on . Since i joined january of last year, i have done deep technical dives across the entire portfolio of the v. A. Applications. Over 1000 applications. These issues issues have come up along the way and for and since wete talked about the one that happened just last month with the increase in traffic that went to the va. Gov website. As the issues identified themselves, were attacking those issues as quickly as humanly possible. Ive also been doing deep dives into the portfolio to try to practice identify those places where there are vulnerable s secretary jewell that have not yet. I think across the board, to your point, shows theres a lot of modernization that needs to happen across the entire estate that we take care of. Thank thank you very muc. I will notot recognize Ranking Member cherfilusmccormick for another round of questions. Thank you so much, mr. Chair. My question is for mr. Delbene. What is your plan to ensure that the i. T. System used by blind and low vision v. A. Employees are accessible and support them while theyre doing the jobs . This is a followup question from section 508 that we started answer that you for the question is a good when and as i said this multiple classes of content, so to speak, that blind and visually impaired folks neew to be able to access. Webpages, pdfs and applications themselves. The applications are fairly thorny because of the complexity involved and its also not as subjective as a committee you have to take scenarios to it. What werefs doing is were identifying the top most important applications of people need to use. We are then grading them based on a scale from a to fs tucker the are in the present and then setting criteria must fix issues before theat application can get approved. Weve been doing this against vhrm that were working on with an type tackle that acrosse fleet of applications, to a point where we actually recently delayed the launch of our new timesheet application just because the fiveweek complaints was not where we thought it should be. You have to keep on this as well. What is your requirement for Software Vendors . We need to push that. A lot of cases as you know those applications are built byan thid parties. So weth need to set criteria and l. Have established criteria, we defineur most musthave cet have to get fixed as part of a ship criteria. When will be able to get those criteria that you have set . We can follow up with you. It would probably be better as a discussion that us actually giving you a textual reply. Its probably a good question for the 27th. My concern is were not getting any real deadlines pixel as were anticipating when well start seeing changes, i havent gotten any set goals or deadlines or even requirements in place. So making sure we can establish that so we are not doing this over and over for years to come. Yeah, i do wantt to caution you though that getting to fiveweek compliance because of the breadth of the portfolio is going to be more of a journey that has been able to tell e on such and such a date we are fully fiveweek compliant. The we can talk to you about her progress. We can talk about her goals, et cetera. I welcome that conversation with you. As long as we meeting those goals and citizens goals thats whats important. Full compliance might be a stretch but we should at least have points to a substantial completion. You should have midterm point so we can get there as were forecasting and without those points where kind moving without a target in mind. We need to have those targets so were not looking teen years later when to quite took us so much tighter those targets are very important. My next questions are about writing this. Veterans who deployed to combat zones and let the military between september 11 through 2001 and october 1, 2013 have until 11 59 p. M. This saturday september 302 directly enroll in the healthcare regardless of whether or not have applied for the disability benefits. Mr. Delbene, given the issues experience with a backdated benefits a deadline in august, how confident are you that the v. A. Is prepared for increase in applications before the Healthcare Access deadline . Thank you for the question. We have intensively scrubbed all aspects of what delivering that service means. But many pass it over to charles and he could talk to you about the website in particular in the back in systems if its to. We are monitoring closely the flow for we call the 10. 10 easy healthcare enrollment form. We have seen a big increase in application i was looking this up and saw in the past 30 days where process over 30,000 healthcare enrollments on va. Gov. I confess to 12,000 in june and read 13,000 in july. We are seeing a big increase and so for the citizens are holding of the very wealthy we are monitoring it intently as we approach that saturday deadline but thats something were watching very closely and will continue to monitor until the end of the dylan. Successively or confidence level is high . At this time i would say it is high, yes. Thank you so much. H. Ideal expert thank you, Ranking Member cherfilusmccormick. I want to recognize mr. Self. Thank you, mr. Chairman i want to go back to the 56,000 veterans. Mr. Tellez, i want to address three different categories of veterans that wee might see. Are you going to force veterans to pay back overpayments . No, we will adjudicate those claims and we had and it gets recovered from them, no. Okay. How about patterns evident underpaid, will you make them whole . Yes. Yes. Okay. Veterans had alreadyte paid back erroneous overpayments . Were looking at that what you do to reclaim that money as result of this defective air. To your plan to reclaim if you have the authority . I believe so, yes. Oh, reclaim . I think more veterans have already paid back some of the debt i think maybe what i didnt anything we were looking to is who are those veterans and how and i can we do that, yes. They have already been forced to pay back the overpayments. Okay. So what are you going to do with them . As a result of this air that is what we look at how to we provide that released back to the. How many do you think have donene that . I dont have that right now but the 56,000 so i dont have the data for you today. I may have spoken to were talking erroneous debts, okay . That theyve even forcek erroneous debts already. How many would that be . I dont have that assessment yet but well work on getting that. I know we are working on assessing the 86,000 population and we will im sure i october be able to tell you a little bit more in detail of what those different populations look like. Okay. We have been talking a lot about process here, which had a frustrates me because i would love to talk about results as opposed to just process. Let me give you another process that weve been dealing with here in congress, and thats the appeals process. The appeals board, for a long time, has not been able to do its job in a timely manner. So we have actually put in a bill to add two judges to the Appeals Court because the board will not act in an expeditious manner