Veterans Affairs Committee on Oct. 17th, 2012

[Janice Burke]

Maybe I could speak to that.

Certainly the idea of the benefits browser is to ensure that for veterans and their families, and certainly for neighbours and support groups that are interested in understanding what services are available, it's provided. It's in no way necessary for veterans or their family members to make a decision about what services or benefits they're going to actually access or apply for.

As you pointed out, it does look complex, but I think it's complex because we have a multitude of programs and supports for veterans. That's what makes it complex. If we just had two or three programs for veterans, this would look very simple, but because we have such a wide suite of programs, it's actually a good-news story that it looks like this.

Certainly what we've seen and experienced is that if veterans have mental health conditions, most are able to function quite well, and they're able to access the information on websites and elsewhere. When they're in a crisis or they're not doing so well, it's the family members who are accessing the information. This is great for family members and for their peer support circles, as well, who want to access the programs. It's really—

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Since I don't have much time left, I want to know very quickly what guarantee we have now that there will still be telephone service in 10 years for veterans who do not want to use the website.

[Janice Burke]

What I can say is that at Veterans Affairs Canada, we are committed to meeting the needs of veterans and their families, whatever those needs might be. Whether it's today, tomorrow, or in 10 years' time, I'm quite certain that we will be meeting those needs through whatever channels exist. We don't know what technology might exist or what the needs might be in 10 years, but I can assure you that we will be there to assist.

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

Thank you very much.

Now we'll go to Mr. Lobb for five minutes, please.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

The first question I have is to Ms. Ostridge. The work you've done was in coordination with the Veterans Ombudsman's office, and I'm assuming with the Royal Canadian Legion and other groups, etc. Is that the fact? They were involved with the perceived issue and the perceived solution, all the way through to completion. Is that the idea?

[Sheri Ostridge]

Yes, although a slight nuance is that it definitely was the leadership of the ombudsman's office that started the process. They had a tool and they brought it to the department. I want to recognize their leadership in doing that. They shared that they had something they thought was worthy that the department should consider. Once that happened, we worked over the months with the ombudsman's office. After that it was expanded to service officers at the Royal Canadian Legion.

We're not done, though. I must add that this is the launch. As with any web tool, it's only as good as the feedback we get, in this case from users, veterans, and service officers. Part of our plan is that we will do focus testing later this calendar year. It is a continual process to get feedback to make it better.

The ombudsman, I'm sure, will have other recommendations the department will consider in regard to communication. We are open to those, because at the end of the day it helps us communicate better with veterans.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

If you have a VAC number for your VAC account, is it your interpretation that on one screen you may have your VAC account open, and on the other screen you may have a screen open to help you fill out or continue your application?

[Sheri Ostridge]

That could be. I couldn't speak for an individual veteran, but I know that there are many options for use. We've been thrilled that we've been able to expand My VAC Account. We hope over time that more veterans will be using it. You could see them working in tandem. They are complementary tools. We'll hopefully find out from our user feedback whether they have them open at the same time or use them at different times.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

The mandate behind all this is to cut red tape. You write in your presentation that this gives fast and easy access to relevant information. Have you done, or are you going to do, any tests to actually see how much faster this actually is compared to the old system?

[Sheri Ostridge]

That's a great suggestion, so we'll work that into our planning. We haven't developed the focus group testing questions yet for what we're trying to achieve and test. It is a great suggestion, so I'll bring it back.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

I'm pretty certain that this is going to be exponentially faster than what was there before. However, I think this committee would be interested in seeing, in situation X, how much quicker it is for the average person to get to where they need to go.

[Sheri Ostridge]

Thank you.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

In regard to Ms. Morin's comments about the chat accounts—and far be it from me to stick up for any Veterans Affairs department—Veterans Affairs has a Twitter account and a Facebook account. You can email and call your own personal representative. How far do we have to take this thing? It seems to me that there could be some skepticism among veterans about having a chat account and who would be looking at it. Is there any sense in keeping a chat account?

If they want to start their own Twitter accounts or Facebook pages, maybe that's where we can just say that this is what we've done, it's a great thing, and if anybody wants to tag something or attach something, maybe that's where they should keep that to themselves and their own groups. They can help each other. Does that make any sense?

[Sheri Ostridge]

I'd add to Janice's point about needs.

What's important for the department, and frankly for other departments, is to respond to the needs of the veterans. How many tools are enough? We don't know in five years if Twitter is even going to exist anymore. It's more likely it'll be replaced by the next new one, so we have to be conscious of where our veterans and their families are and we want to be there. We also know that CF modern-day veterans have online chats and they have their own communities. Ours isn't to replace those, but it's to complement them from an information perspective.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

I have a quick last question. Was there a budget assigned to this project?

[Sheri Ostridge]

Sure.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Could you tell the committee what that cost was?

[Sheri Ostridge]

Yes. The majority of cost was our staff. I don't have the hours broken down as to how many staff and how many hours. That's something I couldn't guess at right now.

As far as web development cost is concerned, we had a small contract in the range of $25,000 to $30,000. Obviously, because the website already existed and all of the web pages were there, it was the filter and the development piece that we just needed to build. It was actually kind of a beautiful project in the sense that it took the big book and just made a really sophisticated table of contents, if you will, to get to the information that's in the book.

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

Thank you very much, Mr. Lobb.

Now we go to Mr. Lizon for a full five minutes.

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for coming here this afternoon.

The first question I have is on the seminars that you mentioned. Will you do seminars in other cities in Canada? If I'm interested in sending one of my office staff to the seminar and maybe in contacting the local Legion to also take part in the seminar, would you run it?

[Sheri Ostridge]

Yes, absolutely. We have an outreach group, and part of their goal is to make sure that benefits and services information gets out, so we would, absolutely. It speaks to Mr. Stoffer's question as well on remote areas. We have to have other champions, such as yourselves, who have staff and who themselves have interactions with veterans and can tell them about these tools being available. Upon request, we could certainly arrange to have information sessions set up.

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Having the information is important because if my office, or anybody else's office for that matter, gets a phone call from a veteran, they will be able to assist the person, or if the veteran has a person who is computer-literate and the veteran doesn't want to do it himself or herself, he or she would get the proper instruction.

There was some suggestion of chat rooms. I also have a question on what's next. The reason is that I was expecting the browser to be comparable to the tax software that you sit in front of. You input your information, you click finish, and there come your options and warnings or reminders that you may be eligible for something. Could you maybe elaborate on this? Is there something you plan for the future, maybe not immediately, but in future development?

[Janice Burke]

I think our motto at Veterans Affairs Canada is to continuously improve. If there's opportunity to improve our services and programs, including our online system, we want to do that, in consultation, obviously, with our stakeholders and with our veterans in terms of what the needs may be.

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

My colleague Ben Lobb asked whether this works together with the people who have accounts set up. How is it connected together? If a veteran wants to start filling out the application, for example, and sets up an account, someone can remotely help the person. How does this work with the browser you're presenting?

[Sheri Ostridge]

I'm not the expert on My VAC Account—I think Ms. Sinnott was here recently—but I can tell you that the My VAC Account is a secure environment, and to protect the privacy of that client, information is retained in it. In order to respect that secure zone, there's no interconnectivity between this tool and that tool.

This information is on the website, though, and it is complementary to My VAC Account. I say complementary because they're both online and they're both self-serve for veterans, and that's part of our target. Part of our goal with transformation and in cutting red tape is to give veterans choices and options for information, so they're complementary in the sense that they're both online. Veterans have told us that they want more options for online business with us, whether it's for an information need or, in the case of My VAC Account, to help with actually serving the veteran and getting the actual benefit for them.