Veterans Affairs committee  We were far from national interconnectivity between the community hubs, but we have set up MOUs and partnerships with AmericaServes and America's Warrior Partnership, which are two of the larger community hub programs that represent about 24 different communities collectively. We've set up accounts from one community hub to the other so we can bilaterally refer and track that progress for veterans who are either transitioning from the military installations in those regions or migrating for business or economic opportunity.

Veterans Affairs committee  Absolutely, and our new GI Bill.... In the old GI Bill you had to spend it within 10 years. Now it doesn't have a ceiling in terms of time frame, but the money does have a limit. If I serve 48 months, or four years, in the army, for example, I am only eligible for 36 months of school, which doesn't really add up, but that's one of the....

Veterans Affairs committee  Absolutely. I think it's a question of educating employers on the value of hiring veterans and on the skills that we bring and showing that if combat and operational stress is an issue, it's acute, typically, not chronic, and that we can make it more acute and less chronic the faster we get them into a new mission, role, or opportunity to lay a foundation for their family and make an economic and social impact on their communities.

Veterans Affairs committee  We originally went in very punky about it. We have these terms like API, and all these data and technology terms; we have to make sure the APIs measure up. One dumb marine infantry guy came into the room, and he asked why we didn't open an account with one community hub and an account with the other community hub.

Veterans Affairs committee  There's a nice way of answering that. I think at the highest levels of the bureaucracy at the defence department that hasn't been achieved yet, unfortunately, so we took it upon ourselves to bring industry, the credentialing body, and the U.S. Army Engineer School for the construction side specifically together and we engaged the dean of the engineering and construction school at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, and he was able to sign off on the fact that we basically took industry and a credentialing body and crosswalked.

Veterans Affairs committee  That's a fantastic question. It's a huge dilemma for our public organizations that serve veterans. Fortunately, within the system there are some extremely.... Particularly the Military Veteran Peer Network is a state-wide initiative that specifically goes to rural communities to which veterans return, and it connects them to institutional services, be those state agencies or other non-profits that may be headquartered there, which can provide them the services they need.

Veterans Affairs committee  It's no different here. The VA doesn't provide employment services. That's the one major difference. The VA does provide some housing services, but a lot of that's grant-based to NGOs. The VA likes to indirectly fund a lot of community-based organizations to deliver the services.

Veterans Affairs committee  That's a great question. In fact, the marketing campaign is one way. That's only going to touch maybe a quarter of the veteran population that's transitioning into Houston. The best way though is word of mouth, what we call in the Marine Corps the lance corporal underground or in the U.S.

Veterans Affairs committee  The integrated technology system I referred to is based on Salesforce.com, which is a Fortune 500 client relationship management tool, a cloud-based system in which every organization has an account, so whenever they receive a referral as an organization via employment services or volunteer services, they then input that into their own system, but then they have to go back in and make sure that activity is updated in the Combined Arms system so that the other organizations know and we can track all of that data.

Veterans Affairs committee  The competition for limited resources is always going to be a barrier for many smaller non-governmental organizations that are serving an at-risk population. But typically, as I mentioned earlier, the KPMG tool that we asked them to develop, which vetted the organizations on the front end, the real-time data that we produced showing their effectiveness at achieving those outcomes, and the speed at which they achieved those outcomes really holds the balance, so to speak.

Veterans Affairs committee  Do you mean the number of veterans who work in the NGOs and government agencies or the number of veterans coming through the system?

Veterans Affairs committee  That's a good question. Here locally we have some nationwide organizations that have a regional presence, which have anywhere from four to eight people. The VA, of course, is a massive organization. It has an entire hospital here. It has a lot of veterans who work for it and a lot of civilians.

Veterans Affairs committee  The veterans who receive services—and we have now 1,200 clients year to date, and we're probably going to hit closer to 2,500 before year end, because this is a busy time of year—are able to go in and rate their experience. This is something I didn't mention before, so thank you for asking, ma'am.

Veterans Affairs committee  We've made many mistakes in the last 10 years. The only reason we're here now and that we have created this system is that we continue to make mistakes and continue to improve the process. It's not perfect, because we have such a limited government. We have so many NGOs filling the gaps, so to speak, in transition and veterans affairs.

Veterans Affairs committee  Absolutely. There's a lot of data that we can't access when we refer to the Veterans Health Administration that is operated by the VA—all the VA health systems. What we can see, though, is what is reported on the back end of that to Congress, showing how effective our local hospital is or our outpatient clinics are and how typically healthy our veterans are.