Empowering Vets to package up and view their own claims information in a way that more closely aligns to what claims adjudicators are going to be looking for, without bogging them down in laws/regs and making it as burdensome as it is when the VA explains it. Maybe some gamification of the process, in manageable and unintimidating steps.
The biggest thing to understand is that Veteran's do not currently have a way to even view their static "file" that is being reviewed. The VA and advocates with proper clearance can view both top-level and detailed information much more than the claimant themselves can. They basically get to logon to vets.gov to be told they are #10253 in line and it is currently at the "Processing Evidence" level and that's it.
Doesn't really make sense to have the claimant have to work so hard to know how to shape their own claim that they initiated. The easier the claimant can do the legwork, the less the government has to do to explain and pickup extra work (the government has certain obligations to fully assist).
I was actually considering writing one but I have no established presence or blog. I'm a full-time attorney but I've been following USDS work with VA for years now. I am subscribed to every update in certain respositories.
In very very short terms, the tools have been designed from scratch without primary stakeholders (veterans, their advocates) for 2-3 years and they are just now considering opening up to stakeholder issues on their github. Instead, they focus on VA employees say they need to accomplish their jobs or even VA contractors.
Certain VA employees have publicly stated ownership of the USDS's work on their behalf, it's "their" software and not the public's or Veterans', and it is clearly designed as such.
I could give very specific examples all throughout the USDS VA Digital Service github account but I'll just leave this nugget[0] (which I wrote) from October 2017. They just stated their intention to begin to incorporate stakeholder ideas only a few months ago[1].
What would actually improve Veteran's claims processing starts with what Veterans and their advocates can do - to SAVE government resources doing the same thing or codifying it into complicated software on their end.
If anyone wants to help Veterans, I am an attorney, 5+ years in assisting Vets get VA benefits.
I have A LOT of fully formed concepts, but amateur/hobby technical ability.
Most immediate goal is to compliment but go well beyond the very minimal efforts that USDS has been doing for Vets directly the last 2-3 years. VA has coopted USDS into assisting the VA first, Vets only incidentally.
[email protected]
The biggest thing to understand is that Veteran's do not currently have a way to even view their static "file" that is being reviewed. The VA and advocates with proper clearance can view both top-level and detailed information much more than the claimant themselves can. They basically get to logon to vets.gov to be told they are #10253 in line and it is currently at the "Processing Evidence" level and that's it.
Doesn't really make sense to have the claimant have to work so hard to know how to shape their own claim that they initiated. The easier the claimant can do the legwork, the less the government has to do to explain and pickup extra work (the government has certain obligations to fully assist).