Veterans Affairs Committee on May 9th, 2013

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

The committee will come to order.

As you know, pursuant to the Standing Orders, we are undertaking a comparative analysis study on the services and benefits offered to veterans by Canada and its allies.

I'd like to welcome our guests. I'll introduce you in a second.

I want to give a heads-up to the committee that we have a letter from the finance committee to provide a response to the budget bill. We have the opportunity to do so, and I'm going to deal with that at the end of this business. As well, we have to review a private member’s bill and report back, and we are ready to do that. So we have two items of business at the end.

Good morning to Mr. Robert Reynolds, director of the benefits assistance service with the Veterans Benefits Administration of the United States Department of Veterans Affairs.

Rather than go through the names again, maybe you can introduce yourselves and then give a small presentation.

We have our committee members here; we have three parties represented, and we'll let them ask questions. Please start by introducing yourselves and then give your presentation.

[Robert Reynolds, Director, Benefits Assistance Service, Veterans Benefits Administration, United States Department of Veterans Affairs]

I am Robert Reynolds, the director of the Benefits Assistance Service. Good morning.

[Thomas Murphy, Director, Compensation Service, Veterans Benefits Administration, United States Department of Veterans Affairs]

My name is Tom Murphy. I'm the director of the Compensation Service for the VBA inside the USVA.

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

Thank you.

[Thomas Murphy]

I don't have a prepared presentation, but I understand you want us to talk about our program, what we're doing, and the future we're heading to in the next year or two.

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

Yes.

[Thomas Murphy]

Fortunately, I can do that off the top of my head. I've spent some time with Keith, Colleen, and some others on your VA staff in Canada, so I have a pretty good understanding. Our programs are very similar in the way we do things, although we've gone about the solutions to them slightly differently.

As you're very well aware, we pay for compensation for impact on ability to earn a living. Inside that is a very broad scope, a very broad spectrum.

Today we're sitting in a largely paper world. We have a current inventory of approximately 830,000 claims pending. We're completing them on average in about 265 days. Our secretary has laid out a goal for us that, by the end of our fiscal year 2015—which means September 30, 2015—we have to have the backlog, the number of those claims that are over 125 days, down to zero. We will improve our quality that we measure through our quality program from the current day of 89% to 98% by that same date.

In order to do that, we've determined that we need to take a two-pronged approach: to increase productivity, we're putting process changes in place; and to improve the quality part, we're relying in no small part on automation to take a lot of the variability out of the decision process.

On January 28 of this year we launched a system called VBMS, veterans benefits management system. This system was a couple of years in the development. It takes our entire paper-bound process and puts it into an automated system so that everything is done electronically. It's data-based as opposed to image-based. So we're not just collecting in the form of paper and looking at it as images on a screen; we're extracting data off the paper we collect as we scan it in, and we start processing this in a digital environment.

Depending on what office you look at, we're seeing anywhere from an increase in productivity of 15% to 20% on this first-generation system that was launched in January. Every three to six months there's a new release that introduces new capability, and it expands, so we take it across the entire spectrum of processing that we do.

We've started this in a few offices. We have 56 offices spread throughout the country and a couple of satellites on top of that. We started in a couple of offices, made sure that it worked, and expanded out, and three weeks from today we'll have every office in the country operating under this new system. This new system has been put in place using a point-forward concept, meaning the majority of those 830,000 claims we have in the system today are in the paper environment and will stay there until they're processed completely. However, point forward, every new claim that comes in is done in the electronic, paperless environment. That addresses the processing piece.

Let me give you a quick rundown on some of the other things we're doing. Very simply, going out and scanning all this paper doesn't do a whole lot for us. It's very expensive, it's time consuming, and it doesn't allow us to take the full benefit of the automation. This is going to very quickly reach over to Rob's world, where I'll stop.

We were up in Canada recently, over the winter, giving a demonstration of how to do an application online. Along with that comes some uploading. The bottom line here is that we put a front end in place that allows us to collect information in a digital environment; it's entered by the veteran, as opposed to collecting paper, scanning it in, and involving people.

We're still measuring the exact impact in terms of lift. Here's what we do know: the process we use in the electronic environment today, just the few claims that are coming in that way—there are only a few hundred because we haven't done a full national launch on this yet—are moving through our system in about 30 to 45 days as opposed to the 285-day average in the paper world that I was telling you about.

We think we have a system in place that's really going to change the way we do things. Now it's a question of how fast and how soon we can scale it up.

With that, I think the real benefit here would be some questions and answers from those of you sitting in the room, if you'd like to open the discussion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

Thank you very much, Mr. Murphy.

We'll have the questions, and then, Mr. Reynolds, you can add your comments. Would that work for you? Okay. You both agree.

We do a set round of five-minute questions. We're going to start with Ms. Mathyssen from the New Democratic Party.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to both of you for joining us and for offering this information.

I have a number of questions. First, there apparently was a vote recently in the House of Representatives about the use of service dogs for injured veterans. I wonder if you were aware of that vote. Do you know anything about how that would be utilized in terms of supporting veterans who need that kind of extra support?

[Thomas Murphy]

I'm aware of the program. I've seen many of the benefits of it, but it's primarily housed in our VHA, the hospital arm of VA.

Here's what I do know about it, and it's primarily tied to those with mental injuries. The dog is a stress reliever and helps the individual cope with day-to-day activities in their life. VA is very involved with it. We have an entire research group that lines up veterans with dogs, and we're seeing great benefits from it.

If you'd like to go into a whole lot of detail on that, I'd be more than happy to arrange for experts who run that program in the VA to provide you with further information. But that's about the extent of my knowledge of the program.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

I would appreciate that very much. That would be very kind.

There certainly is a challenge in terms of providing enough dogs to support people in the general population, so I am quite interested in the application to veterans.

On my next question, you talked about the new system. It sounds very exciting. I wonder if you have any sense of the overall cost of the new system. Does it save in terms of monetary expenditure, or was it a significant up-front outlay? How does that work?

[Thomas Murphy]

There was a significant upfront outlay. I think it's been three years in development, with a significant amount of money and effort. For example, the team that works on this inside the Veterans Benefits Administration alone is over 200 people. In addition, there is an IT team that is dedicated to working on this, plus contractor support from another government agency, plus some commercial contractors.

This is a very large project, spanning many years. At this point it's a launched program, so the initial development dollars spending rate will start slowing down somewhat, and then we will field the improvements and develop that into a second, third, and fourth generation.

In terms of what we're saving, we can start right up front. I ran a regional office in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and I spent $1.5 million a year just mailing files around. Multiply that number times 55 offices. We're not shipping anymore because everything is electronic, so immediately I get a bump measured in tens of millions of dollars as a result of not shipping files around any longer.

The other side is that I'm starting to see improvements. I have my first measurements back from a two-hour rating in front of a rater, and I'm saving 17 minutes. You might look at that and say that's not so significant, but when you look at it being the equivalent of my hiring 17% more people, it's a significant number. We're just starting to see the savings from that program in the first generation, and we expect it to get much larger before this is over.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you.

I'm assuming the expertise you sought was contracted outside of your regular VA personnel, and that you found others who had IT experience, etc., who weren't necessarily within the veterans organization.

[Thomas Murphy]

We used the prime contractor that was contracted from our IT department. The centralized IT arm of VA is an organization called SPAWAR, which is another government agency that does this kind of development in the software world. They were the prime contractor used in this, although there was one branch of the federal government contracting with another branch of the federal government to do this for us.

In addition to that, at their discretion, there were some commercial contractors brought in to help.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you.

Finally, you talked about the efficiencies, and I'm wondering if any of your VA offices were closed. You talked about 56 offices. Were any of them closed or slated for closure?

[Thomas Murphy]

No, there were none closed.

Being slated for closure is a topic that I will stay off completely because of the sensitivity of that. I'm sure you can imagine why I'm saying that.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Yes, I'm sure.

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

Thank you very much.

On that uplifting note, we'll move on to our next questioner.

It will be Ms. Adams, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Veterans Affairs, for five minutes, please.

[Eve Adams, Conservative, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

Mr. Murphy and Mr. Reynolds, thank you very much for joining us here today.

Could you give us a general overview of how the department contacts veterans about the services and benefits available to them?

[Thomas Murphy]

Sure. That's in my world as far as outreach goes. We do several scenarios. I don't know if you want me to answer the question now or wait until I give my presentation.

We do targeted outreach. Part of it is the eBenefits forum, which I'll talk about a little bit. Starting from the day you sign up and come into the military, you will see your first benefit with VA, which is our service members' group life insurance. Then there are benefits throughout your life cycle that are VA benefits. As you become eligible for those, we send targeted e-mails providing the date on which you will become eligible.

So we use proactive target messaging that says, “Based on the information we know about you, you are now eligible for our home loan benefit. Would you like to get your certificate of eligibility for that benefit? Click here and come in and get that benefit.”

The other thing we've started to use pretty frequently now in the past couple of years is social media. We're finding great success using Facebook and Twitter and webinars. We do what we call Twitter town halls and Facebook social media events, through which we will “viral message” specific targets that are events of that day.

The other thing—

[Eve Adams, Conservative, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

Do you mind if I jump in there?

How many folks would you have participate during a Twitter town hall or one of the Facebook events?

[Robert Reynolds]

Tens of thousands will participate. The important part of that, though, with the social media is the viral messaging event. You're reaching a larger population because of what they call impressions of big corporations or even individuals. So their fans see it. It's like that saying: if you tell two people, they'll tell two people. Really, the magnitude is much larger in the social media environment.

We've started just recently to work with our veteran service organizations very closely. I meet with them every two weeks, but we're starting to work now with our public-private partners—our Walmarts, our Goodwills, our Home Depots, and other private organizations that are helping us get the word out. We're really trying to do that targeted outreach, even in the rural communities that we might not be able to get to.

[Eve Adams, Conservative, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

How is Walmart, for instance, helping you? Are they distributing literature? What are they doing for you?

[Robert Reynolds]

These are very new relationships that we've just started. I think Walmart had a goal to hire 100 veterans. We're sharing information. We have data on all our veterans, in a sense, and now with eBenefits we know where those users have accounts. We want to focus on those communities and those populations that we're not hitting yet. Walmart has stores, say, in those areas, or Goodwill has stores, or other private partners have locations that can help us get the word out about the benefits and services we provide.

[Eve Adams, Conservative, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Reynolds.

Moving to mental health, we operate 17 operational stress injury clinics, and each clinic has a team of psychologists, psychiatrists, mental health nurses, and other specialized clinicians. Do you operate something similar?