VA Explains Vonapp Delays (Sort Of)

The Veterans Affairs Department told me on Tuesday that delays veterans experienced in accessing the Veterans OnLine Application (Vonapp) Web site on May 1 resulted in part from a 10-fold increase in traffic to the site that day, the first day veterans could apply for a benefits under the post-9/11 GI bill.

VA spokesman Jim Benson said 21,994 users attempted to access the Vonapp site on may 1, "10 times the volume of access we normally receive in any given day."

Benson said about 77 percent of all users successfully logged on to the system. He added the remaining 23 percent did not successfully log in as a result of not having a valid logon password.

But this explanation does not cover veterans I interviewed who could not even make it to the log on page despite repeated attempts. I tried 10 times to access Vonapp on May 1 and made it to the log in page only once. The problem was not lack of a password (which seems to put the onus on the veteran) but a slow or inaccessible system.

Vonapp provides electronic filing capability for veterans and beneficiaries applying for education, vocational rehabilitation and employment, and for compensation and pension benefits.

Benson said that VA received reports from 28 individuals about slow response on the Vonapp site. He also said VA had "enhanced" the capability of the site to handle an increase in traffic from veterans applying for post-9/11 GI bill benefits but did not explain what those enhancements were, for example an increase in server capacity or bandwidth.

Contingency plans were developed to manage higher than expected loads, and Benson said those plans were executed during the weekend, which seems backwards to me.

VA received 2,528 education applications on May 1 and about another 6,000 during the weekend, Benson said. Yesterday the Vonapp site carried a warning that some users reported problems with attaching documents and suggested users who encountered that problem to mail the documents to a VA regional office.

Documents mailed or uploaded are all placed in the VA's Image Management System, Benson said, and documents electronically transmitted placed in the individual's image file the day they are received. Mailed documents that are received are scanned into tye image system when they are received at a regional office, Benson said

If a regional processing office receives the documents before a claims officer reviews the application, no additional time would be required to process the application, Benson said. However, if the supporting documentation was not received before the claims examiner reviewed the claim, it could increase the processing time, Benson added. I wonder how long.

Finally, Benson said testing of a front end tool to help claim examiners automatically calculate payments under the new GI bill started today and will continue for the next six weeks, along with examiner training, which starts June 1.

VA expects to have the front end tool fully deployed by July 6, or less than a month before it needs to start processing payments for the fall college semester.

This is a really tight deadline.