Unclear contract requirements and unrealistic expectations have contributed to delays in efforts by the Veterans Benefits Administration to implement and transition to a Digital GI Bill platform, which is meant to improve the delivery of education benefits, according to a report by the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General.
The report, which the VA OIG released on Aug. 28, details the results of an audit that the office had conducted to assess the progress VBA was making in implementing the platform, which originally involved a 10-year, $453 million deal with a contractor.
According to the OIG, the VBA has so far only delivered one of three test environments that, under the original contract, should have already been available as of October 2022. The OIG attributed the backlog to limited resources and infrastructure.
The VA watchdog also noted that the deployment of the Digital GI Bill platform depends upon the decommissioning of older systems like the Benefits Delivery Network. The BDN was originally scheduled to be decommissioned in September 2023 but the target date has now been pushed back as far as spring 2025.
The inspector general also called out the VBA for its failure to effectively communicate critical information to the contractor, including the project’s integrated master schedule, which plots the scope of the effort. The VBA had not even formulated the master schedule until February 2023.
The same communication issues also resulted failures in the critical path, a schedule’s sequence of activities.
The VBA has since renegotiated the contract, which is now worth $932 million. The renegotiation is also expected to further delay the platform’s implementation.
To address these issues, the VA OIG recommended the establishment of a mechanism to monitor the project’s progress, better communication with the contractor and the formulation of strategies to address critical path failures.
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