In March 2021, the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) began transitioning to a Digital GI Bill platform designed to improve education benefits delivery. The original plan called for implementing the new platform through a contractor for 10 years at a projected cost of $453 million. The VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) conducted this audit to assess VBA’s progress in implementing the platform.
The OIG found VBA encountered delays due to unclear contract requirements and unrealistic expectations. The original contract required VA to provide three test environments by October 2022, but resource and infrastructure limitations resulted in only one test environment, which was undergoing testing in January 2024. Further, the platform relies on the decommissioning of older systems such as the Benefits Delivery Network (BDN); however, BDN’s decommissioning has been pushed back from September 2023 to as late as spring 2025, which will delay platform completion and may increase costs.
The OIG found VBA did not follow the Government Accountability Office’s best practices for a project’s integrated master schedule, which plots a project’s entire scope. Until February 2023, the platform project had no overall master schedule, and once one was established, it was not consistently shared with the contractor. The OIG also found that poor communication contributed to failures in the critical path—a schedule’s continuous sequence of activities—that resulted in delays and increased costs.
VBA has renegotiated the original contract, further delaying implementation and increasing project costs by $479 million, more than doubling the original contract to $932 million.
The OIG made three recommendations to the under secretary for benefits to increase the chances of successful implementation under the new contract through better monitoring, stronger communication with the platform contractor, a consistent and updated master schedule, strategies to address critical path failures, and a clear timeline.
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