VA's Spiffy New Web Site, But . . .

I really, really wanted to praise the slick design of the redone Web site operated by the Veterans Affairs Department, which it launched on Monday. But, alas, I instead need to put on, once again, my grump hat.

VA STILL (yes, I'm shouting) has not fixed the real problems with a truly mystifying corner of its Web operation I visit frequently: the Veterans Benefits Administration's Monday Morning Workload Report. This used to starkly delineate in spreadsheets how far behind VA lags in one of its core missions, processing disability and pension claims.

As I reported last month, starting the first week of October, VA redid its Monday Morning Workload page to provide a "more meaningful and transparent look" at all the data -- except it forgot to include any information AT ALL on pending GI bill claims, including claims from vets going to school under the post-9/11 GI bill, a truly botched program.

VA did not manage to get education claims data back into new, improved Monday Morning Workload reports until Oct. 26, but it sure looks far less meaningful than the old way VA presented the data.

Until Sept. 28, the report offered mucho details on education claims pending -- the number of claims in the current week vs. the previous week, and the percentage change from week to week, as well as the number of claims in the same week last year.

The new more "meaningful" Monday Morning Workload Report pares that rich data set back to its bones. Just the number of post-9/11 claims pending as of Nov. 23: 65,829. And all other educations claims pending: 217,936.

Want to know the week-to-week percentage change? You need to pop up the spreadsheet from the previous week (Nov. 16, kin this case), copy down the figures (which are 64,452 post-9/11 claims pending and 211,327 other GI bill claims pending), and then figure out the percentage change.

I'm really bad at math, so I only did the percentage change for the post-9/11 bill claims, which shows over the past week the number of pending claims has increased by 1,377, or just a shade more than 2 percent.

I'm still waiting for someone from VA to explain how the changes in the Monday Morning Workload Report are more meaningful than the old way. And I'd also like to get a handle on how it is doing on whittling away the post-9/11 claims, since the backlog is going up, not down.