Efforts to modernize a Department of Veterans Affairs system that supports the processing of veterans’ benefits claims have been hampered by “insufficient oversight and weak program management,” according to the agency’s Office of Inspector General.
The watchdog warned in an audit released on Tuesday that VA’s Office of Information and Technology has not taken all of the necessary steps to keep the revamp of the agency’s Benefits Enterprise Platform on track, which could potentially affect the processing of veterans’ benefits and other modernization efforts.
The BEP platform — one of 85 legacy systems that VA has identified as needing to be modernized or decommissioned to “improve overall efficiency of claims processing” — helps facilitate the sharing of information between the Veterans Benefits Administration and other “business line systems” that include pension, vocational rehabilitation and employment benefits.
VA awarded Booz Allen Hamilton a $1.1 billion contract in May 2021 to integrate its benefits systems into a new cloud-based Benefits Integration Platform, with the plan calling for the legacy BEP system to be migrated to this new service and then subsequently decommissioned. Although the contract was supposed to be completed this month, OIG noted that the latest timetable from VA said the BEP modernization effort is now slated to be completed in the second quarter of fiscal year 2034.
“Because BEP supports a significant number of systems, there is increased risk that other systems relying on it may experience negative consequences from potential delays in the modernization effort,” the report said.
The audit said the Office of Information and Technology failed to develop “a high-quality, reliable program schedule as recommended by the Government Accountability Office’s Schedule Assessment Guide” for the project and has instead relied on an agile project management tool for the effort — a tool that “does not contain roadmaps or detailed plans for the entire scope of the project.”
OIG also found that the office lacked a reliable lifecycle cost estimate for the modernization initiative, which has resulted in inconsistent funding information being included in various BEP plans and has “limit[ed] VA’s ability to make informed decisions.”
Lack of proper oversight, the watchdog reported, also may have jeopardized the security of veterans’ sensitive personal data when the office “hosted minor applications without conducting required security assessments.” After OIG notified VA officials about documented vulnerabilities — some of which dated as far back as 2021 — the watchdog said VA took the necessary steps to assess the security of its applications and remediate any identified issues.
OIG’s audit recommended that VA take steps to enhance its BEP modernization efforts, including by developing and maintaining a program schedule that aligns with best practices, ensuring that staff are following proper procedures when it comes to storing scheduling information, developing a “reliable, validated life cycle cost estimate” for the project and tracking all relevant project costs. VA officials said they concurred with the watchdog’s recommendations.
The BEP project is just the latest VA modernization initiative to be singled out for criticism by OIG for resulting in significant delays, cost overruns and oversight gaps.
VA is still in the process of developing a new digital GI Bill system, which the watchdog noted in an August 2024 report has seen its cost more than double as a result of “insufficient planning.”
The agency’s large-scale electronic health record modernization project has also been plagued by cost overruns, delays and oversight issues since the deployment effort began in earnest in 2020. The Trump administration has prioritized righting that effort, however, and VA Secretary Doug Collins said earlier this year that an EHR rollout resumption push has been “phenomenal” so far.
