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 inte
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
Starting at eight eastern on cspan. Cspan2, providing live coverage of the u. S. Senate floor proceedings and key Public Policy events. And every weekend, booktv. Now for 15 years the only Television Network devoted to nonfiction books and authors. Cspan2, created by the cable tv industry and brought to you as a Public Service by your local cable or satellite provider. Watch us in hd, like us on facebook and follow us on twitter. Iraq war veteran Travis Fugate says he may have gone p blind because his v. A. Center doctor didnt have the right information. Mr. Fugate says the v. A. s failure to fix issues was depressing. Veterans Affairs Department officials also testified at this hearing with members questioning why it was taking so long for the departments records to mirror the defense departments. This is just over two hours. [inaudible conversations] good morning. This hearing will come to order. I want to welcome everybody to todays hearing titled assessing inadequacies in v. A. Dat
Militarizing Law Enforcement act does. And that is to stop that flow. And return control of the process of accusation of acquisition back into the hands of civilian authority. Thats the first thing that we need to do. And the second thing with need to do isening sure a good analysis of the personnel that we have doing the Law Enforcement, because as i said, if you have been to a war zone, the statistics show that many of those who return from the battle suffer from posttraumatic stress and other illnesses that affect the Mental Health of the people. And so, we must take better care of the Mental Health of our Law Enforcement personnel. Be they having or having been deployed or not, being involved in Law Enforcement is very stressful and sometimes that Mental Health can break down and people start making bad decisions. And so we must get a handle on that in this country. And then, once we get a handle on the militarization, there are structural issues that need to be dealt with, loss of
Our statutory authority. Increasingly we are finding ourselves unable to read what we find or unable to open a new device. That is serious. I think encryption is a good thing. I think there are tremendous societal impacts to encryption. Not only lock your cars, but you should encrypt things that are important to you. We have a collision in this country getting closer and closer to a head on, which is our important interest in privacy and our important interest in public safety. The logic of universal encryption is inexorable, that our authority under the fourth amendment, and amendment i think is critical to liberty and the right oversights to obtain information is going to become increasingly irrelevant. As all of our lives become digital, the logic of encryption is all of our lives will be covered by encryption. Terrorists and spies will be in a place that is utterly unavailable to courtordered process. That i think should be very concerning. I think we need to have a conversation ab